Solberg's PhD project studies representations and functions of machine vision technologies (such as augmented and virtual reality, biometrics, ocular implants, drones, etc.) in digital games. Machine vision can be directed to the player (e.g., in dance games where the camera registers your body’s movement and matches this to its preconfigured parameters) or to the player character (usually in science fiction and as a part of the virtual environment).
The first part of the project aims at cataloguing and analyzing agents and actions in machine vision situations, seen in a still developing database at machine-vision.no. The second part more closely examines two common machine vision representations in games – surveillance cameras and holograms – to see how games can investigate the hybridity and distribution of vision, control, memory, and agents through technological mediation because they both thematize and simulate these processes. The PhD project is part of the larger digital humanities ERC research project Machine Vision in Everyday Life: Playful Interactions with Visual Technologies in Digital Art, Games, Narratives and Social Media at the University of Bergen.