Investigating State & Corporate Violence with ML & CV
Forensic Architecture’s use of computer vision & machine learning sheds light on human rights violations and expands the conversation on ethical philanthropy
Building convolutional neural networks (cnn) to classify images on a Jupyter Notebook was beyond the scope of what I expected to learn at General Assembly’s data science immersive these past couple of months. As we finished the fascinating lessons for the week, I recounted a disturbing art installation I saw at New York’s Whitney Museum Biennial exhibition last year, when I had never heard of the terms computer vision or convolutional neural networks.
Following the George Floyd protests, the use of tear gas by law enforcement once again came under scrutiny. Lawmakers in nine states introduced legislation to ban tear gas, and Portland, Denver, and Seattle have suspended its use to disperse crowds. Repressive governments use tear gas to suppress collective and often peaceful protests in public spaces, while our own government used it on even women and children at the Tijuana/San Diego border just a few years ago.
Severe allergic skin reactions, blindness, bronchial spasms, anaphylactic shock, breathing difficulty, disorientation, the danger of pulmonary or cerebral edema, disturbed cardiac rhythm, and even death are just some examples of the effects tear gas can have on someone that has been exposed.
Ironically commissioned by the Whitney Museum last year, the Triple Chaser installation was put together by Forensic Architecture (and with the work of Laura Poitras & Praxis Films). Some quick facts:
· Safariland manufactures tear gas
· Warren Kanders is the President of Safariland
· Warren Kanders has made a fortune from the sale of tear gas
· Warren Kanders was Vice Chair of the Whitney Museum board of directors
In its quest to expose brutality against civilians, the Forensic Architecture (FA) team set out to train a computer vision (cv) classifier to identify the use of Safariland’s Triple Chaser grenades. Images of these used grenades are rare, and after finding less than 100 of them online, FA embarked on creating a synthetic data set of them. Along with photos and videos from activists that retrieved previously fired grenades, FA used the publicly available specifications and labeling variations (different languages) to build a 3-D digital model of the grenade. After setting the digital image against bold patterned and realistic photo backgrounds, colored masks were used to tell the classifier where the grenades were in the image, ensuring the classifier could identify the grenades. Training the model on what is NOT a triple chaser grenade was just as important. (Full Video)
Just weeks after the installation premiered Kanders resigned his Vice-Chair position on the Whitney board along with his wife who was co-chairwoman of the museum’s painting and sculpture committee. On June 9th of this year, Kanders announced that he was divesting Safariland of divisions that sell “crowd-control solutions, including chemical agents, munitions and batons, to law enforcement and military agencies.”
As The Art Newspaper points out:
“The departure of Warren Kanders as vice chairman of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York…is forcing US museums to publicly reckon with the make-up of their boards…while US museums are largely dependent on private philanthropy, there are no uniform best-practice guidelines to help them in appointing board members or deciding what kind of trustees should be accepted or avoided.’
Kanders, Kozlowski, The Sackler family, are just a few examples of cases where the name behind a donation or board seat can be heavily scrutinized. With no real safeguards for appointing controversial figures to the boards of our most esteemed institutions, the conversation around ethical philanthropy has never been more relevant.
Meanwhile, Forensic Architecture will continue using audio analysis, data mining, geolocation, computer vision, machine learning, virtual reality, photogrammetry, and other cutting-edge technologies to investigate state and corporate violence and bring other human rights violations to light. According to their website, some of FA’s categories of investigations include: Airstrikes, At Sea, Borders, Chemical Attacks, Detention, Disappearance, Environmental Violence, Fire, Forensic Oceanography, Heritage, Land Rights, Migration, and Police Violence.
For more visit the Forensic Architecture website.
Articles used for this post:
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/forensic-architecture-triple-chaser-whitney-biennial-1544911
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/arts/whitney-warren-kanders-resigns.html
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/25/us/san-ysidro-port-of-entry-closed/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/arts/design/tear-gas-warren-kanders.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tear_gas
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/kanders-resigns-1609330
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/08/us/military-tear-gas-protesters-trnd/index.html
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/what-price-philanthropy-american-museums-wake-up-to-public-concern
