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

Unhomely!  <br>Lee Miller

Unhomely!
Lee Miller

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.

Portrait of Martín Zapater (1797)

Portrait of Martín Zapater (1797)

Martín Zapater y Clavería, born in Zaragoza on November 12th 1747, came from a family of modest merchants and was taken in to live with a well-to-do aunt, Juana Faguás, and her daughter, Joaquina de Alduy. He studied with Goya in the Escuelas Pías school in Zaragoza from 1752 to 1757 and a friendship arose between them which was to last until the death of Zapater in 1803. 

Loading Limit

Loading Limit

Pera Museum presented a talk on Nicola Lorini’s video installation For All the Time, for All the Sad Stones, bringing together the artists Nicola Lorini, Gülşah Mursaloğlu and Ambiguous Standards Institute to focus on concepts like measuring, calculation, standardisation, time and change.