Photography as Machine Vision
The Role of Imaging Technologies in Art History
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12919677 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Emily Pugh (0000-0001-6928-7888, Twitter (United States)), Tracy Stuber (0000-0002-3284-4780, Schlumberger (Ireland), corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 211-233 |
| Publication date | 2023-05-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Photographies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1754-0763 • E-ISSN: 1754-0771 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17540763.2023.2189286 |
| OpenAlex | W4378417366 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 23 |
This paper analyzes the relationship between photography and machine vision by examining its prehistory, as embodied in the art-historical photo archive. It characterizes the introduction of machine vision to the world of libraries, archives, and museums as a renewed (rather than wholly new) effort to mechanize or systematize art and its history. Assumptions and attitudes about photography embedded in the photo archive are therefore easily and often inconspicuously reproduced in efforts to study art computationally. Noting this repetition, this paper reframes the debate about art-historical applications of computer vision to emphasize the issues this technology raises about what constitutes art-historical work. The question is not whether we should use computer vision or computers for art-historical inquiry, but rather, what kinds of activities we ask computers to perform. Understanding machine vision in the context of its prehistory is critical for explicating its relationship to photography, and the role of photography and digital images in the study of visual culture more generally
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Contemporary art · Context (archaeology · Embodied cognition · History of art · History of photography · Performance art · Photography · Prehistory · Visual arts · Archaeological Research and Protection · Computer Science · Conservation Techniques and Studies · History · Photography and Visual Culture · Artificial Intelligence
The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media
Complementing Connoisseurship With Artificial Intelligence
Jumping into the artistic deep end
The Power to Name
Archival infrastructure and the information backlog
Decolonizing Art History
The Image of Objectivity
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |