[The ESP Game]

Ever wondered about how images on the Net or elsewhere get catalogued and tagged so that we can effectively retrieve them? They require "metadata tags" which are basically list of words—yes, we filter the logic of images through the sieve of language—reflecting the mental categories by which we define them.

The ESP Game invites you to join in.

The game selects a random image on the web and then teams you up with another anonymous player from anywhere on the globe. The only qualification is that you both speak English. The two of you suggest defining categories for the image to one another until you're in agreement. All while the clock is ticking, which makes it a game. Presumably, working together helps insure that you don't simply project your own idiosyncrasies onto the image. Unless, of course, the two of you share—consciously or unconsciously—similar viewpoints or interpretive strategies.

Even if you don't want to take the time to give it a try, you can check out their page of six example images. Go for it.

Looking at the labels chosen for each, you see immediately how we project our own interests and ideologies onto pictures. Indeed, an image isn't legible [as opposed to visible] until we interpret it, and categorization is central to interpretation.

To read an image is to impose your own mental grid on it, one that reflects the multiple social categories that define you, from large [mantra-categories like race, class, gender, nation] to small [your own kinky idiosyncrasies].

Next, imagine trying to come to agreement about meta-tags with someone who has a dramatically different world-view from your own—with an anonymous English-speaking co-interpreter in Botswana, for example. Now you start to get the picture and see how deeply interesting this game can be.

In the top picture from their examples [above], I recognize immediately actress/celebrity Reese Witherspoon. Guy-like, I'm drawn first to her beaming face. But the co-interpreters of this image have agreed that the primary meta-tag should be "man," the character on the left who to me seems obscured by a visor and at this scale just barely discernible as male. Then, next on their list comes "hat." Poor Reese: all those hundreds of thousands of dollars on publicity and she's out meta-tagged by a "hat"!

Question is: how did these co-interpreters arrive at this categorization, and what does it tell us about them?

This isn't a media class and I'm trying not to drag out all of our clanking terminology, but you get the picture here. [I'm going to assign a class to play this game and write about what it tells us. They'll have to drag out the terminology.]

This game is really fascinating. Oh for a partner who gives good category.