Tim Parchikov
From the series ‘I’m not a robot’
2024–2025
Digital printing, plasticisation
Courtesy of the AZ Museum and Marat and Maria Ganeev
Tim Parchikov’s project ‘I'm not a robot’ is a reflection on the phenomenon of the reCAPTCHA system. Often, instead of immediately returning the desired information, search engines redirect users to a reCAPTCHA page, where they see a photo divided into squares and a message like ‘select all the squares that contain a fire hydrant/traffic light/car’. Websites explain the need for this annoying page as a matter of user security: CAPTCHA protects accounts from bots and confidential information from intruders. However, it’s not only user protection that motivates search engines to include reCAPTCHA: by completing this simple but tedious test, users are involuntarily training the search engine’s neural network algorithms. By analysing human errors and correct answers, a neural network learns to imitate the human thought process. Thus, under the guise of security, corporations exploit users for the benefit of cutting-edge technology.
Tim Parchikov's project mimics a reCAPTCHA page. Although the artist poses questions to the viewer that are currently beyond the capabilities of neural networks trained on CAPTCHA. Like humans, a neural network can match the word ‘traffic light’ with its image. But an algorithm, unlike a human, cannot answer a complex, ironic or ambiguous question, the essence of which lies not in the identification of a sign with the item signified, but in a complex subjective attitude tied to the experience, morality and reflection of the responder.
Moreover, a reCAPTCHA page is a pause, a stop in the endless stream of searching and absorbing information. Tim Parchikov presents this hypostasis of an intrusive and implicitly exploitative phenomenon. By answering the questions posed by this fictitious reСAPTCHA, we can reflect on the differences that separate a neural network from a human, and a user who responds like a neural network from a critical thinker and doubter.
