This installation – by David Bowen – creates a situation where the fate of a colony of living houseflies is determined by the accuracy of artificial intelligence software. The installation uses the TensorFlow machine learning image recognition library to classify images of live houseflies. As the flies fly and land in front of a camera, their image is captured. The captured image is classified by the image recognition software and a list of guessed items is ranked 1 through 5. Each of the items is assigned a percentage based on how likely the software thinks that the listed item is what it sees. If "fly" is ranked number 1 on the list, a pump delivers water and nutrients to the colony based on the percentage of the ranking. If "fly" is not ranked number 1 the pump does not deliver water and nutrients to the colony. The system is setup to run indefinitely with an indeterminate outcome.
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David Bowen and Brett Smith. Minneapolis, Minneapolis Institute of Arts
