On the night of 18 March 2018, in a suburb of Phoenix (USA), a woman was knocked down and killed by a self-driving Uber car. This tragic accident brought to public attention the tests that the American company had been running for two years with a view to soon being able to offer a self-driving taxi service. At the same time, the accident revealed that, despite the extent of the testing, there was still no truly autonomous vehicle. Each car had an accompanying Vehicle Operator (VO), an employee whose job it was to watch over the car that was learning to drive itself.
Rather than the technological prowess of an “intelligent” vehicle, VO is interested in the paradoxical role of the vehicle operators, these unseen helpers who watch over the machine learning process whose aim is precisely to be free of human constraints. Over the images from a LiDAR scanner showing what the machine sees, a VO describes her experience.
Ouster, Outsight
Nicolas Gourault is an artist and director trained at Le Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts Contemporains and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy, but also at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. His work is marked by this twofold background and seeks to create connections between artistic technique and politics by providing a documentary critique of the new media. One of his interests is the way simulation can be used to transform modes of representation and to control spaces in order to limit unpredictability.
Cursus2017 / EHESS, mémoire de master 2 sur les techniques visuelles de l’agence Forensic Architecture,
sous la direction de Cécile Boëx
2015 / DNSEP, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy
