Abstract

"People of the Gold" is a project that reflects on the identity, and history of the early Chinese immigrants in California during the period of Gold Rush. The project consists of multiple archive-looking moving images generated by a machine learning algorithm trained with historical documents. The work is presented in a dimmed room with interface for viewer to browse. The constantly changing portrait photo of people and the "identity information" next to the photos are presented.

The slow transitions of the millions of faces and information in the "photo collage" generalized the individuality, discussing how technology has worked to dehumanize these group of people and to make them replaceable, exchangeable, or ‘fungible' and how this is emblematic of technology can do, the violence it has, and the potential to inflict upon difference, upon otherness.

This project aims to raise emotions to the history of those people of the gold through exploring the potential of machine learning algorithms in the field of photographic imaging and anthropology studies and also raises questions about relations between algorithms and identity.