Optical Character Recognition knows the magic of every day life and finds Chinese lyrical poems in sponge cloth prints

2023

Amid an introspective examination of the distinctions between an affair and a marriage, one possible difference emerged in the form of routine, unhurried tasks – such as the simple act of washing reusable sponge cloths in the washing machine. As a personal reminder, the decision was made to immortalize this by experimenting with black ink, sponge cloths, and paper.

The resulting prints were interesting, and, to share them on social media, they were photographed using a mobile phone camera. During this process, the phone’s built-in AI or optical character recognition (OCR) detected „text“ within the prints.

Absurdly and to my absolute surprise Chinese ideographs were found in the repeating patterns of the sponge cloth prints which – after translating them – remind of contemporary lyrical poems, with some phantasy. In different prints the AI or OCR found different poems which were abstract, but they could be understood meaningful or associative. This work – amongst other things – has a critical look at the practical limitations of AI or OCR.