56 HAPPENING Video Vortex – Exhibition
finding some technology that could edit pieces of the archive. “This archive was so heterogenous, so mixed, that it was hard for a human to find common spaces between the fragments,” says Pablo Núñez Palma, the primary researcher of the team. “We thought, what if we analyse these images according to their materiality – just as a bunch of pixels with dark spaces and light spaces – and then we could start to edit them according to that. We found that a machine could do so more easily and in a more objective way than a human.” The team don’t have any extensive coding background, so it was important for them to work with the machine learning tools that were easily available, including open source tools or free trials of commercially available tools. They used Google Trends to analyse the initial news topics that formed the basis of each film; Corticol was used for text analysis, and image processing was done by Clarifai. “Interestingly enough, these relatively unknown smaller services seemed to be most accurate,” says Bram Loogman, who focused on the project’s software development. “What you need is a good dataset and the datasets that are used by Google and Microsoft have a more limited, specific goal – more marketing-oriented.” The team did a lot of prototyping, determining by trial and error what could produce a useful outcome with the chosen technology. OLD FILM, NEW VIEWS The project has helped to expose to the public film elements that would in other circumstances be hidden from them. With its sources unidentified, the ‘Bits & Pieces’ collection isn’t something that can
PAST TIMES The ‘Bits & Pieces’ collection uses archive footage to reinterpret contemporary news stories
WE ARE INSERTING A DIFFERENT SET OF IMAGES AND AESTHETICS INTO PEOPLE’SSOCIALMEDIASTREAM
be easily monetised or incorporated into other projects. “We’re presenting this collection to new audiences, audiences who wouldn’t normally go to a film museum, and presenting it as an aesthetic object,” says Núñez Palma. “The criteria for building the ‘Bits & Pieces’ collection was that the material is unidentified, but also that it has aesthetic and historical value that needs to be preserved.” “By re-uploading these videos into the Jan Bot social media profiles, we are inserting a different set of images and
aesthetics into people’s social media stream,” says Loogman. “Besides the fact that this might be a pleasing experience – to have beautiful images from the past pop up in your timeline that might otherwise be flooded with boring pictures all looking sort of the same – it also gives an interesting perspective on the news. “Since it is using Google trends, and taking the topics that are most popular, I’m seeing a strange video from a long time ago with women posing in front of the camera and suddenly the name Kim Kardashian pops up. You think ‘What’s happening here?’. Then you click on the link and start reading the original news story. I suddenly find myself through this image archive exposed to popular topics I wouldn’t normally be in contact with.” Núñez Palma continues the thought: “It’s also showing you the banalities of the internet. Most of the news we see trending in the western world is about football, some memes, Donald Trump, common places. “And an interesting dialogue is created between the images on screen and the news. The gaze of a character will quickly take on different overtones when suddenly the name of Donald Trump appears. But also the other way around – you begin reading the news through the perspective of this 100-year-old archive. The history puts it all in a totally different perspective.”
SCREEN TIME “It’s showing you the banalities of the internet...”
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