Trevor Paglen

Half Dome Hough Transform

Half Dome Hough Transform by Trevor Paglen merges traditional American landscape photography (sometimes referred as ‘frontier photography’ for sites located in the American West) with artificial intelligence and other technological advances such as computer vision. This photograph was taken at Half Dome, a frequently visited granite rock formation in Yosemite National Park, California. For this work, Paglen created a digital file of the 8 x 10 inch photographic negative so that the artificial intelligence program can apply computer vision to evaluate the content of the image. In the photograph, Paglen visually represents lines that indicate how computer vision read the image, revealing the visual logic of the algorithms. 

As part of this project, Paglen traveled through the American West to photograph iconic sites that were historically the subject matter of 19th century frontier photographers, as well as still popular subject matter today for professionals and amateurs alike. Originally, many of the photographs produced by frontier photographers were used by the US Department of Defense for military reconnaissance, thus the historical images are deeply rooted in American colonial projects.