The DNA of Nature and Technology

Photography, 4. Semester, Supervisor Marcus Kaiser

With the rise of artificial intelligence and biomechanics the distinction between nature and technology fades away. But what does a fusion of nature and technology look like? How do we currently present nature and technology in photography? Can we find characteristics which let’s us construct new images for the fusion of these fields?

I gathered photos from different public platforms (Google, Instagram, Unsplash) used their pixel values to construct the DNA of each image. This DNA was uniformly mapped to create patterns which could be compared and explored in an interactive visualization in Processing. Is there a difference between photos that we tag as nature or technology? Do the characteristics differ between platforms or amateurs and professionals?

Data Mapping:

The average color of the image is mapped onto the brightness histogram of the image to create a unique color code (DNA). The following shows an overview of all image DNAs:

These codes were uniformly mapped onto canvas by rotating the around a combined center. Using different rotation methods and mapping methods created different patterns:

In the end I chose a method where the characteristics of the patterns were the easiest to distinguish. In the app, these patterns can be compared and sorted in different ways.