"Profile #075138 Lauren"
acrylic screenprint, digital print, collage, paint marker, vinyl, Yupo
12" x 12" pieces each, 36" x 36" all together framed
2020
"Profile #114445 Jess"
acrylic screenprint, digital print, collage, paint marker, vinyl, Yupo
12" x 12" pieces each, 36" x 36" all together framed
2020
"Profile #082058 Nayana"
acrylic screenprint, digital print, collage, paint marker, vinyl, Yupo
12" x 12" pieces each, 36" x 36" all together framed
2020
"Profile #093730 Saman"
acrylic screenprint, digital print, collage, paint marker, vinyl, Yupo
12" x 12" pieces each, 36" x 36" all together framed
2020

About the Project

I make these screenprints to investigate the computer vision behind facial recognition (FR), to understand what the computer does to a face. Beginning with Instagram, I download selfies from various profiles and process them in FR software.
The darker pieces I process directly with facial recognition (FR) software called Edge Detection and Gabor Filtering. FR and Photoshop use some of the same image filter processes, which I also employ for digital editing: Gaussian Blur, Threshold, and Noise. Screen-printing holds the detail of the photographs and expands on themes of image filtering with Bitmaps. The colorful photos are screenprinted on the backside of the semi-transparent Yupo paper. We therefore view the photo from "behind the screen". The black and white patterns are generated from FR software and replace the primary face, which I digitally print, cut-up, and collage.

Why I make this artwork:

Until recently, the notion that your selfie would be scraped off the internet by a private company and sold to law enforcement as a profitable mugshot would have seemed like a conspiracy theory (or at least an unlikely, worst case scenario). In early 2020, a technology company called ClearView AI scraped millions of public sites, including Facebook, YouTube, and Venmo, amassing nearly 3 billion photos for facial recognition and sold the datasets to more than 600 law enforcement agencies in the US.

These artworks allow the viewer to see an emotive interpretation of FR, how the computer cuts, warps, and distorts faces. Translating these invisible actions from behind digital screens into physical, printed objects makes the reality of online surveillance feel actual and personal. I don’t believe anyone expects their photos to be used for facial recognition (FR) when they post online, and I think we deserve basic digital rights to protect our data from this undesired use.