Looking through An Ad Window
“Coin of the Realm” shows what an iPhone depicts when an advertisement is between it and the view. Looking through a cloak of publicity suspends belief in objectivity, neutrality, and stability. The landscape is riddled with glitch; this is unaltered camera output. Instagram once tagged it branded content.
This is information in ambiguity, and ambiguity in information. Two sides of the same coin.
These photos are made through the window of a bus whose exterior is covered with a see-through ad. Focussed on the ad’s dot pattern, the camera produces abundant and exuberant so-called malfunctions, rendering the scenery like a malleable illusion. The closer one looks, the more difficult it is to decipher.
My iPhone uses iOS 18.1, software released in 2024 which their press release mentions admitted potential for “unreliability and hallucinations1“. So, I’ve made this work with AI? Not really. A digital camera designer described it as computational photography, not AI.
In 2022, an earlier iPhone operating system output this curtain-like, penny tile effect shown below, offering different insight into the processor’s organizational principles—somewhat orderly yet still cryptic and vague.
- “Tim Cook: Apple Intelligence Isn’t Immune to Hallucinations,” PCMag.com, June 11, 2024.
- iOS 18 Features and Updates: Exploring the Amazing Redesigned Photos App, December 22, 2024. As of iOS 18.1, the software uses Apple Intelligence (i.e. AI) to enhance the camera output.