'Now Objects Perceive Me': Art that Interrogates Machine Vision

Abstract

This paper analyses three recent works of art that interrogate the relationship between human perception and machine vision: Nadav Assor’s art-documentary Lessons on Leaving Your Body (2014), Muse’s VR music video Revolt (2015), and Erica Scourti’s Body Scan (2015). The goal is to understand how these works present the relationship between human and machine vision. When machines can see us, do we see them as subjects in their own right, or as expansions of our human selves? The paper argues that the three works discussed see machine vision in three different ways: as an expansion of human perception, as a hostile, controlling force that should be destroyed, and as a commercialised force altering or co-constructing the way we view our own humanity. Theoretical perspectives include Andrejevic’s work on the sensor society and self-droning (Andrejevic and Burdon 2015; Andrejevic 2015), Flusser on the relationship between the human and the apparatus of technical images (Flusser 2000), and work on posthumanism (e.g. Hayles 1999; Nayar 2014).