VVORK

»Symbology (Volume I)«, 2006 by Trevor Paglen. Military culture is filled with a totemic visual language consisting of symbols and insignia that signify everything from various unit and command affiliations to significant events, and noteworthy programs. A typical uniform will sport patches identifying its wearer’s job, program affiliation, achievements and place within the military hierarchy. These markers of identity and program heraldry begin to create a peculiar symbolic regime when they depict one’s affiliation with what defense-industry insiders call the “black world” – the world of classified programs, projects, and places, whose outlines, even existence, are deeply-held secrets. Nonetheless, the Pentagon’s “black world” is replete with the rich symbolic language that characterizes other, less obscure, military activities. The symbols and insignia shown in the Symbology series provide a glimpse into how contemporary military units answer questions that have historically been the purview of mystery cults, secret societies, religions, and mystics: How does one represent that which, by definition, must not be represented?




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»Logo.Hallucination« continuously monitors the images circulating on the Internet looking for hidden logos. It’s software is based on neural network image recognition. Pattern recognition is a field in full expansion, it constitutes a key technology in the domains of safety, of the management of the rights, of marketing… »Logo.Hallucination« proposes to use technologies of recognition of images in order to detect subliminal forms of logos or emblems, hidden (generally involuntarily) in the visual environment or in the whole of the images of the Internet. Every time a hallucination is detected, an email is sent to the owner of the image. By Christophe Bruno.