Picture Perfect Pi

Using a Pi to infuse AI into a camera and shock users into taking beautiful photographs

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From alarm-clocks and to-do lists to calendar notifications and email reminders, do you sometimes get the feeling that you’re a slave to the machines? Peter Buczkowski has just taken the slavery to the next level. His Prosthetic Photographer ‘looks’ through a digital camera for interesting scenes and when it finds one, it jolts you with an electric shock, forcing your index finger to involuntarily trigger the camera’s shutter and snap the image. Ouch… lovely.

What was the original inspiration behind the Prosthetic Photographer project?

Prosthetic Photographer is part of my Master’s thesis in digital media. The topic I chose is ‘Experiments on human-computer interaction through electrical body part stimulation’. I discovered TENS units (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) that people usually use for pain relief. One can also use them to stimulate specific nerves and thus move a muscle unwillingly. I really liked the idea of having a way to control human behaviour with code, and to create a new form of human-computer interaction where the human becomes the interface. For this project I wanted to get some insight into machine learning and neural networks and how to use them for creative work. I wanted to create a device that knew about ‘good- looking’ and aesthetic images, and which controls the human using it to take them – and eventually even [have them] learn from the decisions the camera had made.