Camera shocks: positive conditioning?
The Prosthetic Photographer is designed by artist Peter Buczkowski and it’s designed to shock you into taking better photos. The AI device recognizes well composed photos and then forces (literally) the photographer to press the shutter. Camera shocks. Via a electrical shock. But it’s a mild one, don’t worry!
Buczkowski explains why the camera shocks you, it’s down to being able to control “muscles and nerves with these SENS [subcutaneous electric nerve stimulation] units.” In this sense the human becomes the interface” and the AI does all the work. So essentially switching roles of camera and human.
But how does it know what’s a good photo? The AI uses the CUHKPQ data set, this data set contains 17,000 internet photos. Photos of which have been rated by humans. The camera can detect when you’ve composed a scene to the standards set by the photos. Then it fires a jolt of electricity into your hand to take the picture.
Sounds cool enough but Buczkowski himself has stated that people’s opinons of the photos were ‘meriocre/not creative enough’ – it is just an algorithm afterall.
Deeper than camera shocks
However, the shock training is much more deeper than algorithms. Humans by design, like to copy things they like. For example an artist may develop his own aesthetic. Another artist may feel inspired by this aesthetic and copy it. While some may copy it and make it their own. Therefore the original artists aesthetics has trickled down 3 people.
So, in effect, you can teach the human mind to take photo’s based on what the camera deems as ‘photogenic’ Byczkowski echoes this to Engadget:
“I really like that my specific trained algorithms create its own aesthetic, and it depends on what data set and what neural network you use.Something similar is possible with this device, you can train people to establish a certain aesthetic.”
Buczkowski was interested in how machines can train humans. He states to Engadget that there are so many uses for Prosthetic Photographer. It could be a ‘training device’ or a ‘conditioning device’ mainly for the beginner photographer.
He was amazed at how Prosthetic Photographer changed his skills and in effect controlled him:
I saw it when I was running around taking pictures with this device, that, yeah it kind of conditioned me. I’m seeing the world how the device sees it.”
To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!