Trevor Paglen's Sight Machine Performance with Kronos Quartet at San Francisco's Pier 70

On January 14, 2017, artist Trevor Paglen will present the performance 'Sight Machine' at San Francisco's historic Pier 70 in the Dogpatch neighborhood, collaborating with the Kronos Quartet. The event, commissioned by the Cantor Arts Center of Stanford University, features a live video feed processed in real time by a surveillance algorithm, projecting a 'robotic vision' on a large screen behind the musicians. The quartet will perform a diverse repertoire including Bach, African folk music, and works by Terry Riley and Steve Reich. Paglen, known for his research on visibility and the metamorphic nature of images, has written about how the majority of images today are produced by machines for other machines, as in his essay 'Invisible Images (Your Pictures Are Looking at You)' for The New Inquiry. The performance is by invitation only, with requests available from January 6 via the museum's website.