Image Mis-recognition: Augmentation, Automation, and Aesthetic Intelligence,
Johanna Drucker, Breslauer Professor of Bibliographical Studies in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles
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Abstract
Douglas Engelbart, one of the pioneering figures in human-computer-interface, made a careful distinction between “automation” and “augmentation” in his discussion of the role of computation in human activity. Automation described fully mechanical processes. Though providing benefits of scale and speed, Engelbart felt they would be inadequate to simulate human thought. Instead, Engelbart suggested computation play the role of augmentation, an extension of human capability. More than half a century later, the automated processing of images has become increasingly sophisticated, with advanced inference engines and associative models of feature recognition. But computational work remains a literal reading of visual information—the processing of data in file formats—in accord with statistical metrics.
The processes still have a fairly high error rate. From an instrumental, functionalist, perspective, what is at stake in the increasing use of image processing is improved accuracy through greater computational power. But perhaps the concept of error is misconstrued. The ability to mis-recognize, to cognize otherwise, remains crucial to the generative engagement with aesthetic objects in ways that challenge standard metrics. Can we pose the notion of mis-recognition without falling into romanticized binaries that simply assert human exceptionalism? This talk addresses the role of aesthetic intelligence and affective metrics within these discussions.
Biography
Johanna Drucker is internationally known for her work in the history of graphic design, typography, experimental poetry, art history, and digital humanities. Her publications include Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production (Harvard, 2014), Digital_Humanities (MIT Press, 2012) with Anne Burdick, Peter Lunenfeld, Todd Presner, and Jeffrey Schnapp, and The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art Practice 1909-1923 (Chicago, 1994). In addition to her academic work, Drucker has produced her own artist‘s books that were the subject of a retrospective, Druckworks: 40 years of books and projects (Columbia College, 2012). Her work is represented in special collections in museums and libraries in the North American and Europe. In 2014 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Recent work includes Diagrammatic Writing (Onomatopée, 2014), Fabulas Feminae (Litmus Press, 2015) and two titles published in 2018, The General Theory of Social Relativity, (The Elephants), and Downdrift: An Eco-fiction (Three Rooms Press). Her recent work includes: Visualisation: L’Interprétation Modélisante (B42 Paris, 2020). Visualization and Interpretation (MIT, 2020), and Iliazd: Metabiography of a Modernist (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020) are both forthcoming. Her work has been translated into Korean, Catalan, Chinese, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Danish and Portuguese.
