THE INTERNETS

THE INTERNETS
SZYMON ROGIŃSKI

book design, ai concept incorporated into the book design

Today, the internet is something completely different from what its creators imagined. Data and the traces we leave in a digital environment, using it on a daily basis, have become for the late-capitalist information economy precious material. Today The information we provide to the system becomes a nutrient for algorithms related to the processes of machine learning forming and feeding more or less thought-through artificial intelligence networks. On the basis of information provided by the users, the increasingly efficient sets of algorithms decide which snippet of the universe we should see and what to think. As Designers of this book, we felt obliged to point out in some way this significant change that has taken place in recent years in the structure of the Internet. While designing this book we were wondering how to show the boosting impact that automation technology, sharing economy, and artificial intelligence have on the evaluation of an artistic work itself. That is why we have subjected Szymon Rogiński’s photographs to the evaluation of net algorithms used for the automatic rating and description of photo images. Of course artificial intelligence did not take into account the context of the displayed works, like most things that we observe on the web also the evaluations and descriptions of Szymon Roginski photography were based on an indefinite/unknown algorithm, questioning the methodology of the evaluation of an artistic work itself.

Colophon
  • Texts: Edwin Bendyk, Monika Kostera
  • Editing and Polish proofreading: Julia Odnous-Pawlińska
  • English translation: Anda MacBride
  • English proofreading: Christopher Smith
  • Graphic design: Noviki Post Studio
  • Processing photographs for print: Tomasz Kubaczyk
  • Commissioning editor: Karolina Andrzejewska-Batko
  • Publisher: National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning
    (Narodowy Instytut Architektury i Urbanistyki)
  • First edition
  • ISBN: 978-83-951542-6-3 (English-language version)
  • ISBN: 978-83-951542-5-6 (Polish-language version)
  • © Szymon Rogiński
  • © Narodowy Instytut Architektury i Urbanistyki, 2019
  • Print run: 300 copies (400 PL)
  • Printing: Argraf
  • Printed on LuxoArtSamt 150 g/m2 paper
  • Cover: *Wikipedia
  • Warsaw 2019

●■ Photo captions automatically generated by neural network (www.everypixel.com) and CaptionBot program (www.captionbot.ai).

The prototype for this publication was Szymon Rogiński’s artist’s book The Internets, produced in a run of 5 copies for the exhibition Things to Learn from Facebook, organised by the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok at the Giorgi Leonidze State Museum of Georgian Literature as part of the 3rd Tbilisi International Triennial in 2018. This full edition includes additional photographs and texts.