Open AccessAlgorithmic photography: a case study of the Huawei Moon Mode controversy
Author(s) -
Yuxing Zhang
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
media, culture and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.673
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1460-3675
pISSN - 0163-4437
DOI - 10.1177/01634437211064964
Subject(s) - photography , event (particle physics) , mode (computer interface) , computer science , shot (pellet) , meaning (existential) , indexicality , representation (politics) , computer graphics (images) , visual arts , art , human–computer interaction , epistemology , philosophy , chemistry , physics , organic chemistry , quantum mechanics , politics , political science , law
Moon Mode, an algorithmic program pre-installed on Huawei’s flagship smartphone P30 Pro, intelligently detects and enhances images of the moon captured by the phone. A heated social media discussion was triggered after a Chinese tech critic interpreted Moon Mode as photoshopping/superimposing details onto the original shot. The controversy centered on the line between AI enhancement and superimposed alteration when black-boxed algorithms stand between the user/viewer and the world viewed. The controversy is analyzed, together with Huawei’s marketing materials. Drawing on MacKenzie and Munster’s idea of distributed invisuality, AI-enabled photography is examined as a multiplicative data-processing event that traverses hardware and software, eliding any singular, meta-observational position. The author argues that algorithmic photography can be understood as a dynamic event of algorithmic processuality, indicating a new form of human-nonhuman entanglement in meaning-making practices, which cannot be discussed under the rubric of indexical representation.