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 off 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.
