How do computers see? What do they see? And most importantly, what is the vision of the world, which the digital society offers to us? L'occhio della macchina is a journey into computer vision, into techniques, software, programs. Its aim is that of defining the logic, the reason, the philosophy of the machine, which sees.
Passing through subjects such as Imaging and Computer Vision, and arriving to Artificial Intelligence and digital philosophy, L'occhio della macchina defines a path, which covers our relationship with computers, communication, information and creativity. The book tries to define the dominant logics, which underlie the vision in the computer society, by building a path that explores the histories of Informatics and Cybernetics, a path that delves into the mechanisms of the Computer Graphics, analyses Virtual and Augmented Reality, by proposing a reading which makes Informatics and Philosophy closer.
L'occhio della macchina is a box of stories: it tries to talk about apps and software, about drones which mimic real life, helmets which read our thoughts, about sight and synthetic life and digital biology. The story starts with the birth of Computer Vision, continues in the laboratories of Artificial Intelligence, and studies the visual computer programs, games in Computer Graphics, experiments in Software Art and Digital Art. It is a journey in the new, which talks about the wonders of technology, which talks about us, about the way we see things, about our society and our culture, about our visual culture and, therefore, about the vision of the world in digital times.
From the Introduction:
The book you hold in your hands came out from the interest in computational visual world, Image Processing, Computer Vision and Computer Graphics. They are all different subjects, with different aims and methodologies, but they share a common root, the computer one. It is from this common root that I have started to investigate the features of visual informatics, sure of its revolutionary nature, of the changing in paradigm which have affected the nature of contemporary vision.A new eye, the eye of the IT machine, which is radically different from the eye of the previous optical machines. I wanted to investigate its specific features, I wanted to show the eye of an era with its own "wishes" and "ambitions".
L'occhio della macchina wants to define the idea of the production of sights and of the contemporary visions, rather than tracing a story of the single subjects. When I talk about the “eye of the machine” I mean the eye, which defines the contemporary vision, the character, the visual logic which specifies the impacts of Informatics in our way of looking and seeing.
Simone Arcagni
L’occhio della macchina
Einaudi
2018
