Andreas Refsgaard

Erasing/Enhancing Monstrous Machines, 2021.

© Andreas Refsgaard

When the human eye looks at an image, the area with a high visual salience immediately grabs its attention. As an exploration of the cognition of machine vision, Andreas Refsgaard makes use of algorithms trained in a similar way to identify the salient visual areas in film stills. Thus, in his video work, we see the algorithm analyzing sci-fi film stills concerning the human-machine relationship. As a result, the algorithm produces new eerie images enhancing and erasing the salient visual areas.
 

The films derive from several decades. We revisit old films with metallic robots contrasting contemporary storylines, playing with our doubt as to whether some humans are cloned machines. Consequently, the work sheds light on the development of our relationship with technology throughout time, since digital devices have become increasingly indispensable in our lives.