Only Cloud Knows

Video Documentation

Description

Only Cloud Knows is a Chrome extension that decides what is art through Google Cloud Vision. As each page loads, art-related categories and their confidence scores are overlaid on the images—measuring the incalculable, the incomparable, and the unknown in computationally legible form.

Bibliography

• Bridle, James. New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future. Verso, 2019.
• Crawford, Kate. Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. Yale University Press, 2022.
• Fisher, Anna Watkins. The Play in the System: The Art of Parasitical Resistance. Duke University Press, 2020.
• Fisher, Mark. Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Zero Books, 2014.
• Harari, Yuval Noah. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Harvill Secker, 2016.
• Hui, Yuk. Art and Cosmotechnics. University of Minnesota Press, 2021.
• Naimark, Michael. “First Word Art / Last Word Art.” FineArtForum, vol. 15, no. 8, Aug. 2001.
• Stiegler, Bernard. Nanjing Lectures (2016-2019). Edited and translated by Daniel Ross, Open Humanities Press, 2020.
• Vaidhyanathan, Siva. The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry). University of California Press, 2011.
• Virilio, Paul. The Vision Machine. Translated by Julie Rose, Indiana University Press, 1994.
• Wiener, Norbert. The Human Use of Human Beings. Houghton Mifflin, 1950.

Installation

1. Clone the repo, or download zip (click the green Code button at the upper right of the repo contents, then select Download ZIP in the menu) and unzip it.
2. Enter the src folder, rename config.json-EXAMPLE to config.json, and specify your API key. (To create an API key, follow the instructions here.)
3. Type chrome://extensions in the Chrome Address bar, or select "Window > Extensions" from the menu bar.
4. Ensure the Developer mode switch is turned on in the top right.
5. Click the Load Unpacked button at the top left to select the OnlyCloudKnows folder.

Setup

This setup is based on an exhibition concept originally conceived and conducted by Raiden INST.

Acknowledgment

Special thanks to Daniel C. Howe for his inspirational AdLiPo software, and helpful critical comments on the prototype.

This project is supported by Raiden INST's Emerging Sci-Tech Artist Awards 2nd season in 2023. Thanks to Yu Han, Songhao Huang, and Xueqing Yu.

License

Only Cloud Knows / 只有云知道 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.