This performance lecture presents excerpts and reflections on the Acapulco project, a long-term research initiative developed by researcher and visual artist Bruno Moreschi between 2018 and 2024, focusing on the images used to train computer vision systems. Using methodologies rooted in critical pedagogy, the project offers an immersive experience shaped by responses from experts in AI, the arts, and visual culture. These experts were engaged via mail art, through which they received and reflected on the machine learning images. While theorists analyzed these images, remote workers who curate and organize the datasets for AI training participated in a series of experimental reading and exchange sessions. The result is a visual odyssey that encourages speculation on new ways of understanding images, advocating for a paradigm shift in computational training methods toward more human-centered perspectives and artistic experimentation. What are the resonances of the contextualized and experimental coexistence with these images that train machines? How can these resonances be turned into (un)training material for computer vision?

The lecture is divided into three parts, mirroring the structure of the experimental feature film Acapulco:

Part 1: I Would Like to Buy Your Eyes to Rest Mine
Through a visual experience where the boundaries between supermarket and art museum blur, it challenges how we perceive images in consumerist society.

Part 2: An Image Is a Factory
How do we listen to the voices of these workers, who perform the unseen labor of organizing and labeling images for AI systems?

Part 3: De-Canonization
The final section presents creative programming experiments that deconstruct the layers of training and discourse embedded in the images. This approach allows us to perceive aspects of the images that were previously invisible, offering new insights into the processes of image-making and machine learning.