Operational Images

An in-depth look into the transformation of visual culture and digital aesthetics First introduced by the German filmmaker Harun Farocki, the term operational images defines the expanding field of machine vision. In this study, media theorist Jussi Parikka develops Farocki’s initial concept by considering the extent to which operational images have pervaded today’s visual culture, outlining how data technologies continue to develop and disrupt our understanding of images beyond representation. Charting the ways that operational images have been employed throughout a variety of fields and historical epochs, Parikka details their many roles as technologies of analysis, capture, measurement, diagramming, laboring, (machine) learning, identification, tracking, and destruction. He demonstrates how, though inextricable from issues of power and control, operational images extend their reach far beyond militaristic and colonial violence and into the realms of artificial intelligence, data, and numerous aspects of art, media, and everyday visual culture. Serving as an extensive guide to a key concept in contemporary art, design, and media theory, Operational Images explores the implications of machine vision and the limits of human agency. Through a wealth of case studies highlighting the areas where imagery and data intersect, this book gives us unprecedented insight into the ever-evolving world of posthuman visuality. Cover alt text: Satellite photo on which white title words appear in yellow boxes. Yellow lines connect the boxes.

An investigation of artists' engagement with technical systems, tracing art historical lineages that connect works of different periods. “Machine art” is neither a movement nor a genre, but encompasses diverse ways in which artists engage with technical systems. In this book, Andreas Broeckmann examines a variety of twentieth- and early twenty-first-century artworks that articulate people's relationships with machines. In the course of his investigation, Broeckmann traces historical lineages that connect art of different periods, looking for continuities that link works from the end of the century to developments in the 1950s and 1960s and to works by avant-garde artists in the 1910s and 1920s. An art historical perspective, he argues, might change our views of recent works that seem to be driven by new media technologies but that in fact continue a century-old artistic exploration. Broeckmann investigates critical aspects of machine aesthetics that characterized machine art until the 1960s and then turns to specific domains of artistic engagement with technology: algorithms and machine autonomy, looking in particular at the work of the Canadian artist David Rokeby; vision and image, and the advent of technical imaging; and the human body, using the work of the Australian artist Stelarc as an entry point to art that couples the machine to the body, mechanically or cybernetically. Finally, Broeckmann argues that systems thinking and ecology have brought about a fundamental shift in the meaning of technology, which has brought with it a rethinking of human subjectivity. He examines a range of artworks, including those by the Japanese artist Seiko Mikami, whose work exemplifies the shift.

GOOS is an international programme for a permanent global framework of observations, modelling and analysis of ocean variables which are needed to support operational services around the world. The EuroGOOS strategy has two streams: the first is to improve the quality of marine information in European home waters, and the second is to collaborate with similar organisations in other continents to create a new global ocean observing and modelling system that will provide the open ocean forecasts needed to achieve the best possible performance by local marine information services everywhere. The EuroGOOS strategy envisages our national agencies making a major contribution to that challenging task of globalizing ocean forecasting. The conference also provided an opportunity to take stock of the state of marine science and technology in Europe relevant to the EuroGOOS strategy, and the state of information services and customer needs.

The Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) is an international programme for a permanent global framework of observations, modelling and analysis of ocean variables that are needed to support operational services around the world. The EuroGOOS strategy has two streams: the first is to improve the quality of marine information in European home waters, and the second is to collaborate with similar organisations in other continents to create a new global ocean observing and modelling system that will provide the open ocean forecasts needed to achieve the best possible performance by local marine information services everywhere. EuroGOOS held its second international conference in The Hague in 1999. Here, the operational services already in place in the EuroGOOS regions were presented and evaluated. In addition, a "Forward Look" was presented, with targets for the next 5-10 years. The proceedings of the first EuroGOOS conference were published by Elsevier in the /locate/inca/600827EOS Series No. 62 Editors: Stel et al, ISBN 0-444-82892-3.

In extracting information from aerial reconnaissance/sensor products, the image interpreter must often work with imagery of less than ideal quality. The Surveillance Systems research program of the Army Research Institute is designed to identify factors of photo quality that can help measure the interpretability of operational imagery. In the present experiment, image scale, atmospheric haze, and image motion were judged to be key factors in operational interpretability of imagery. Laboratory manipulation of representative operational images produced experimental images with controlled degradation of these three factors, separately and in combination. Image interpreters were asked to detect and identify military targets on this degraded imagery. Their scores were used to assess interpretability as a function of scale, haze, and image motion. In a parallel experiment, geometric shapes were positioned on background panels of black, white, and grey. Photographs of this array were degraded with respect to scale, haze, and image motion to the same levels as the first experimental imagery, and similar tests were conducted. (Modified author abstract).

There is an urgent need to develop and improve low cost technologies for wastewater treatment. Simultaneously treating wastewater and producing duckweed in a pond system is, therefore, an attractive solution contributing to both environmental protection and food production. Duckweed has excellent qualities: a high protein content, a high growth rate and is an easy crop to handle. The small plant turns nitrogen from wastewater into a food source. This thesis reports on the effect of different operational variables, like anaerobic pre-treatment, the combination of algae and duckweed ponds and pond depth. Improved nitrogen removal was obtained through the combination of duckweed ponds with algae ponds. Duckweed pond systems could be designed with shallow depth without affecting nitrogen removal efficiency. This research is the result of the cooperative effort between the EIDENAR, Univalle, Cali, Colombia and the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education in Delft, the Netherlands.