Naphta

Naphta takes its title from Project Naptha, created by the developer Kevin Kwok, which automatically applied state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms to every image you came across while browsing the web. You could highlight, copy and paste, and even edit and translate text that had until then been trapped in an image. This process, still in its infancy at the time, is applied here to a series of works by artists known for placing gesture and writing at the heart of their practice. Kevin Kwok’s original project still exists as a browser extension.