“As an artist interested in our relationship to machines I find the evolution of vision science, from the computational to the biological as having a peculiar parallel. Recent studies of vision in cats have revealed quite a few parallels to how machines see. In essence optimizations that make it possible for cameras to focus on faces and cars to see traffic signs also allow domestic cats to decide if there is anything interesting going on in a world encoded for humans. Magnitude of change, complexity of edges, direction of textures. After years of using machine vision to allow artworks to react semi-appropriately to the public it is exciting to invert the relationship so that the artwork is only trying to relax and enjoy itself, mostly indifferent to its human cohabitants. Cat meme’s are probably the cosmic consciousnesses revealing itself within all of us, the anomalous popularities of daily phrases and images reveal a super-conscious preoccupation with things that none of us can control or predict but everyone autonomously react to.” — Artists Statement, Oliver Hess.
