Image Classifier for Annotations

At the time of the research for The Library is Open, a point of interest for everyone was annotations.

The Library is Open was a research project focused on knowledge production and its systems. The work questioned the shadows and biases cast by knowledge taxonomy; examined digital proprietary tools as impediments to the free access and circulation of knowledge; and developed annotation tools to foster collective interpretation towards existent knowledge.

As a research group, we were reading and annotating texts together and debating the possibilities of sharing these notes. One particular discussion was about what could/should be considered an annotation: folding corners of pages, linking to other contents, highlighting, scribbling, drawing. I was curious if we could train a computer to see all of these traces, so I started prototyping some examples.

Aim: make the computer recognise "clean" pages of books or "annotated" pages of books.