The less than evil folks at Google recently released a new application for their android platform called Goggles. The application allows users to search the Internet using photographs as opposed to keywords or terms. Google’s complicated search algorithm can now be accessed via the visual.
From Google’s description;
Google Goggles lets you use pictures taken with your mobile phone to search the web. It’s ideal for things that aren’t easy to describe in words. There’s no need to type or speak your query – all you have to do is open the app, snap a picture, and wait for your search results.
This is the latest in a slew of new applications and services from Google as they hope to, yet again, redefine how a user finds information.
But being someone interested in how visual information is understood and consumed, I’ve spent some time thinking about how this new method of searching might change the way we understand photographs.
The history of photography is intertwined with the desire to capture truth. It’s chemical underpinnings and realistic interpretations caused many 19th century painters, for instance, to proclaim the end of their artistic practice.[i]
This truth effect that is so uniquely tied to the photographic process can be seen even today in the use of photography to illustrate everything from current events to family outings. The photograph is understood here as proof, as a reaffirmation of the life we see.
Though artists have been challenging this perception for many decades[ii], the truth of photography has held its grasp on the public consciousness. But in the last few decades, as the digital photographic process has entered the public sphere, the ease of “manipulation” has increasingly devalued the photograph as something proof positive. Public debates over what a photograph should and should not be have rocked the foundations of how to understand photography. Trust in photographic truth is wavering.
Enter Google Goggles.
With only a camera phone, users can now photograph most objects and receive information about them in a matter of seconds. The relationship between the photographed object and the information that is returned through Google is direct, clear and instantaneous. In other words, a direct link between the photographic image and Google’s truth is made. Not unlike the chemical processes that were originally so foreign in photography, the many thousands of filters that make up Google’s truth are lost in the speed of its return. This is, once again, that.
While I have no idea if this method of searching the internet will become as ubiquitous as the traditional text input, I wonder loudly if the relationship between the image and the seemingly definitive information of Google might reaffirm certain notions of photographic truth in the digital age. Imagine, for a moment, if instead of through a keyboard just half of the millions of searches made daily were carried out through the photograph. Perhaps, over time, a certain reaffirmation might occur where photography is once again evidence of something that is true.
Additionally, it will be interesting to see if there’s a change in the perception of photograph as nostalgia. In Google’s system the photograph relinquishes instant information. In doing so, the photograph is no longer a reminder of something, but a means to fast-access information. In fact, the Google Goggles user has the option to discard the photograph entirely, relegating the image to the status of a momentary intermediary.
Whether any of the above changes occur is entirely uncertain. But it’s important that we consider how these developing technologies shape and change perception. Without that consideration, our definition of the photograph might take on the air of nostalgia.
[i] If a man of genius uses daguerreotype as it ought to be used, he will raise himself to heights unknown to us… – Eugene Delacroix – 1853
[ii] Un Chien Andalou by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, Mothlight by Stan Brakhage, The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems by Martha Rosler – these are only a few examples.
Its kinda like when Johnny-5 took a gander at that spilled tomato soup and was able to point out first its chemical make up, and then finally see the image of a butterfly. It was this imaginative leap that made Steve Guttenberg proclaim his “humaness.”
This technology is something that I have been fantasizing about for a while. I always foolishly imagined that if such a technology existed it would have full magical access to the myriad connotations of any image. My hopes being that the massive amount of information would crash the technology once it was available.
It seems to me that google goggles (at least right now) is more of an image-maker. Each example of using the technology demonstrates Google’s structures in use. It gives an image of the limitations of the technology and of the oddly boring scope of Google’s project.
They have only replaced words with some images, a technical feat that does not capitalize on the potential of its components(words or images). It is another tipping of the scales towards the empirical/ technological rubric.
We use empiricism on everything but empiricism. Arthur C. Clarke said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Good thoughts Tim.
Thanks for your comments Ben. Not only are you the first person to comment on the new site, but you’ll most likely be the only person to mention Johnny-5 in a serious response. Cheers to you my friend.
A couple thoughts…
This is a lovely thought. I can see it, someone opens Google Goggle’s, photographs a Jeff Wall picture and immediately the world’s electronics shut down due to overload. Shepherd Steiner steps in, divulges the intricacies of the photograph and reaffirms man’s dominance over machine.
In considering this sentiment, it seems to comes back to one very human trait; the belief that we are special. And though I’m fond of my existence, I’m also not so sure how special or complex we really are. For example, scientists at Oxford claim they are only limited by storage in their attempt to completely map and duplicate every neuron in the human brain. It’s their belief that from this mapping, human personality can be downloaded and installed on computers once storage and price are no longer an issue. Humanness can be broken down to binary code.
Or, take for example, the music of David Cope. After suffering from a severe case of writers block, Cope wrote a piece of software that analyzed music and produced unique work based on the patterns it found. At some level, it seems, creativity can be replicated via computer analysis.
I should say that all this scares me to death. Working like hell to encourage the folding of brain tissue suddenly becomes a lot more tedious in the face of a computer that can write a symphony in 10 minutes. However, this idea of boiling down human personality to digits does provide a certain out of body perspective, one that I think encourages a sense of humility. That sentiment is something we could all use a little more of.
Not capitalizing on the potential of words or photos is exactly what makes this technology so potentially disturbing. It flattens the use and meaning of photography by turning it into a tool of the Google algorithm. With the use of Google so prevalent, I suspect this may mean a sea-change in the broader interpretation of imagery.
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