Distant Viewing: Computational Exploration of Digital Images

By: Taylor Arnold and Lauren Tilton

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Synopsis: A new theory and methodology for the application of computer vision methods to the computational analysis of collected, digitized visual materials, called &“distant viewing.&”Distant Viewing: Computational Exploration of Digital Images presents a new theory and methodology for the computational analysis of digital images, offering a lively, constructive critique of computer vision that you can actually use. What does it mean to say that computer vision &“understands&” visual inputs? Annotations never capture a whole image. The way digital images convey information requires what researchers Taylor Arnold and Lauren Tilton call &“distant viewing&”—a play on the well-known term &“distant reading&” from computational literary analysis.Recognizing computer vision&’s limitations, Arnold and Tilton&’s spirited examination makes the technical exciting by applying distant viewing to the sitcoms Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, movie posters and other popular forms of advertising, and Dorothea Lange&’s photography. In the tradition of visual culture studies and computer vision, Distant Viewing&’s interdisciplinary perspective encompasses film and media studies, visual semiotics, and the sciences to create a playful, accessible guide for an international audience working in digital humanities, data science, media studies, and visual culture studies.