Ibiye Camp, 2020
5’58” 

Behind Shirley deconstructs and rethinks the colonial narratives in the development of facial recognition systems, exploring how darker skin was not taken into account in film chemistry and is now ignored in facial-recognition software.

In photography, ‘Shirley cards’ were used as a standardised reference for colour-balancing skin tones. These cards generally showed a single Caucasian woman dressed in bright clothes, and coloured square blocks of blue, green and red. The chemicals distorted tones of red, yellow and brown, which led to faults when photographing darker skin. Film was not improved until furniture and chocolate makers began complaining that it was unable to capture the difference in wood grains and chocolate types. The default towards lighter skin in technology is still present today, with facial recognition occasionally not registering people of colour. 

The algorithmic bias that exists in digital-imaging technology is due to human biases. When trying to make artificial intelligence, we inevitably recreate human intelligence. AI finds patterns from within pools of data, reflecting our own behaviour and often exacerbating its negative aspects. Empathy has a growing importance in artificial intelligence, datasets and algorithms, fields whose inherent perspectives require further interrogation.  

Hammam

Hammam

Cura

Cura

Dark Origins

Dark Origins

Stream of Consciousness / The Caves of Hasankeyf

Stream of Consciousness / The Caves of Hasankeyf

Robocaliptic Manifesto: techno-politics for liberation

Robocaliptic Manifesto: techno-politics for liberation

Behind Shirley

Behind Shirley

Party on the CAPS

Party on the CAPS

Undercurrent

Undercurrent

Ideology

Ideology

Pera Museum’s  Cold Front from the Balkans exhibition curated by Ali Akay and Alenka Gregorič brings together contemporary artists from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia. 

Artist Nicola Lorini in Conversation

Artist Nicola Lorini in Conversation

Inspired by its Anatolian Weights and Measures Collection, Pera Museum presents a contemporary video installation titled For All the Time, for All the Sad Stones at the gallery that hosts the Collection. The installation by the artist Nicola Lorini takes its starting point from recent events, in particular the calculation of the hypothetical mass of the Internet and the weight lost by the model of the kilogram and its consequent redefinition, and traces a non-linear voyage through the Collection.

The Notions of Race Fred Wilson

The Notions of Race Fred Wilson

Pera Museum, in collaboration with Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), is one of the main venues for this year’s 15th Istanbul Biennial from 16 September to 12 November 2017.