People of the Gold

"People of the Gold" is a project that reflects on the identity, and history of the early Chinese immigrants in California during the period of Gold Rush. The project consists of multiple archive-looking moving images generated by a machine learning algorithm trained with historical documents. The work is presented in a dimmed room with interface for viewer to browse. The constantly changing portrait photo of people and the "identity information" next to the photos are presented. Viewers are invited to browse those files slowly, replicating the experience of browsing historical documents. The project aims to raise awareness and emotions to the history of those people of the gold through exploring the potential of machine learning algorithm in the field of photographic imaging and anthropology studies.