115 x 180mm, 198 pages, black and white printing with colour section, perfect bound, paperback, 2024

Departing from the research by The Photographers’ Gallery digital programme, this book critically investigates the development and impact of visual datasets from the perspective of machine learning, while exploring their artistic possibilities in contemporary image culture.

Visual datasets are large collections of images typically created by researchers to develop machine vision algorithms. These curated sets of digital photographs and videos have also become an object of interest and concern for artists, thinkers, and cultural institutions. A Cat, A Dog, A Microwave... brings together a broad range of associated perspectives from artists, computers scientists, curators and researchers to question the role played by photography when teaching machines how to see the world. The book maps a network of ideas and experiences on labour, identity, aesthetics, circulation, and control and their complex relationship with photographic notions of taxonomy and classification. Historical surveys and specific case studies are brought together with experimental artistic practices to propose an imaginative perspective on photographic datasets.

Published by