Dear all, at first im really sorry for my delay, there were long, rough days in the last weeks. Yersterday I arrıved in istanbul and found time in this busy city.
To refelect a location, it’s also needed to reflect the pictures we have. My picture of another place based on the pictures I see. So, can the Pictures talk with us? What can they tell us? How can they come together and fit to a language that we understand?
In the last weeks I began with a projekt. As starting point serves a selection of images from my own photo collection. The Question was also how interchangeable my pictures are, especially from foreign places. Using the Google images backsearch, it will reverse out a visual media from the original collection and throws it back into the flood of images Google is showing. A variety of “visually similar images” will be presented by Google. There are similar color components and the distribution of the image is measured, also outlines and forms are compared. I abuse this search system. Usually this is used to upload your own images on Google and then control who uses our pictures (maybe) illegally.
The amount is also indicative to images of certain content meaning it’s mirroring social aspects. The inklusion und exclusion from Pictures and image content shows also a lot. It’s interesting how close the Google images are thematically to my self made images, even though they show something entirley different.
I will show some examples
Left is a picture taken by my self in Paris and right a Google result.
My picture which shows a man with a shopping cart on western streets, is again split up by google. In western and third world. An ethnological and economical separation.
The image of a dark skinned man with shopping cart returned in the search results mainly as Indian with car or white guy with shopping cart. The shopping cart, a symbol of capitalism and the Western world. The shopping cart on the photo is ironically used to earn money.
Thematically the only picture matching was a man in Greece also selling Maroni. The background in the right picture shows that the city in which he lives is economically inferior to the city ın the left picture. We also know it is a fact that greece is going through a financial crisis right now. The initial position of the two men, however, seems just the opposite. One improvised with what he had found, the other grilled with pretty professional equipment. In Greece money once was available.
Near Notre Dame, under a bridge, by the river, homeless people have set up. The ” visually similar ” Google results show People climbing on a mountain, rock or doing river rafting.
It’s apparently good that the search for consensus works especially in terms of color. The color variations of the stone bridge on the river leads to images of rock and river. The indication of human presence in the output picture leads to the physical presence of humans in all searching results.
In the reference image, the tragedy is only visible to the ones who can understand the given circumstances. Google does a purely optical analysis and filters out the information of camping adventurers. Even still relatively comfortable. But we are not a search engine and see the tragedy in and behind the image.
Now I had to find the most similar of all the ” visually similar ” images .
I focused here on the color match .
Together the images develop a new language . They influence each other and create a new content. First Association ,the current refugee issue. Two stuffed boats . In a raging river. Emblematic for the difficult path in a temporary shelter in the western world.
One and the same picture? Almost. If the differences are small, they start to stick out more. Attention is paid to details , like “find the 10 differences” . So the similarity is always reflecting differences . At the same time, the similarity also involves an exclusion of differences .
Unfortunately, the metadata of the image found is not available . Thus, we don’t know when these pictures were made. It could be the same evening or years in between.
Sightseeing..
Eiffel Tower
Beach in Tenerife . Here the agreement is to see the mood of the image . The Google results do not show the beach of Tenerife .
Meglisalp in Switzerland . Again, the locations of the images found do not correspond with the original picture.
a parody of tourism..
experiences..
Based on this Project you can get an idea of my interests in this context.
I would be happy to work with someone who sends me a lot of pictures. These would be the basis and starting point of my work form, but are not mandatory visible in the final work. I want to try to see behind the pictures someway.
