Trevor Paglen for Gradient Canvas
Who is Trevor Paglen?
Trevor Paglen is a Brooklyn and Bay Area-based artist, filmmaker, investigator, technologist, and theorist whose work explores questions around vision, perception, materiality, and aesthetics.
What does it mean to see in our current moment?
Paglen asks a central question that guides much of his work: How can we learn to see the world at a moment when rapidly accelerating technologies, shifting politics, and evolving cultures continually push against the limits of human reason and perception?
Clouds by Trevor Paglen
What does a cloud look like to an algorithm?
Clouds is a continuously evolving collection of Bay Area skyscapes layered with meteorological data, classic computer vision techniques, and modern AI systems.
The Cloud by Trevor Paglen
The resulting images include vectors, heat maps, and other forms of machine-generated graphics that reveal how algorithms identify edges, track movement, and analyze patterns in the sky.
Clouds by Trevor Paglen
Do humans and machines search for meaning in similar ways?
Paglen draws a parallel between these algorithmic interpretations and the instinctive ways humans look for meaning in the sky, finding shapes in drifting clouds or connecting stars into constellations.
Clouds by Trevor Paglen
How does technology change the act of looking?
By probing the boundaries between human perception and machine analysis, Paglen invites viewers to reflect on how technology reshapes our relationship with the natural world.
As he explains, “The work that I do has a really simple, overriding question, which is: How do we see? What does the world look like, and what does our moment in time look like?”
Trevor Paglen for Gradient Canvas
His work turns the sky into a site of inquiry, revealing as much about ourselves as about the clouds above.
Learn more about Gradient Canopy here.
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