Video, 55 min, Loop
Trevor Paglen’s work considers how new technologies affect our society. He sheds light on the systems and power structures behind data collection and surveillance strategies while also showing what purposes and ideologies can lie behind the recording of personal information. In the process, he lays bare how computers collect and interpret information on the world around us – and, ultimately, about us as people as well. Paglen’s video piece The Effect Was Almost Magical deals with the question of how artificial intelligence hears, reads, and perhaps also understands. A sequence of sentences is presented, each one entirely without context. The basis is a software program used for speech recognition. The idea is to harness as wide a range of different expressions as possible in order to enable the computer to read on its own. The sentences appear in no logical order, but when they are viewed, the human drive to find meaning in the succession of phrases kicks in. And therein lies the difference between a machine that reads and a human who interprets. Paglen’s aim as an artist is also to convey insights into how we see and are seen, and what processes play out hidden.
