[NetBehaviour] Recognised Faces

[Alan Sondheim]

this is fascinating and disturbing - so many wounds, disfigurements, which 
also refect on the net itself -


On Thu, 5 Nov 2015, furtherfield wrote:

> Recognised Faces by Kristoffer ?rum
> 
> #google #bot #faces #search #famous #generative
> 
> http://recognisedfaces.tumblr.com/
> 
> Recognised Faces is an internet application that generates a daily image of
> a face from images found via google?s lists of top search terms. Facial
> features in the found images are identified, using facial recognition
> technologies usually reserved for mass surveillance, before being combined
> into an image of a new face. After being generated these faces are used as
> the personal avatar of Kristoffer ?rum on his website, on various social
> networks and anywhere else his image might be indexed and scanned for facial
> features by intelligence agencies, commercial agents or other interested
> parties.
> 
> By constructing new faces from parts of the most looked upon images on the
> internet Recognised Faces creates a snapshot of the flow of data collection
> and facial recognition that happens daily on the internet, thus utilising
> facial recognition to generate phantom faces that reflect how computers
> perceive us as vaguely recognisable patterns in an ocean of data. When these
> phantom images are fed back into the internet, they may help to destabilise
> the NSA?s or google?s images of who Kristoffer ?rum is ever so slightly.
> 
> The glitchy faces that emerge from the computer?s dispassionate gaze clearly
> differ from how faces appear to a more human gaze. They may appear somewhat
> monstrous and weird, but for the most part they remain strangely reminiscent
> of the beauty ideals that dominate mainstream media as well as most of the
> internet. What to human eyes might appear to be errors and distortions
> reveals traces of the statistical mode of perception that is really at work
> here - illustrating shortcomings of much reviled surveillance technology
> while providing us with a mechanical mode of observation that just might
> reveal things about our species that our own perception is unable to show
> us.
> 
> 
>

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