Inter/Facing between Technology and the Face: Analyzing the CV Dazzle New Media Art Project as a Techno-Social Critique of Present-Day Face Politics.

Abstract

Today, our faces are processed, and new images of faces are produced by technology with almost no human intervention. These images of the face are powerful, as any system representing the face tells us something about the society that produces it. But how can we tell something about this face when it is blackboxed? Over the past few years, a growing number of artists have also critiqued and interacted with the ubiquity of these facial recognition technologies through new media art. The phenomena shed light on the current understanding of the face, face politics, and the onto-epistemological status of the face concerning this technological landscape. My research looks at the past and present representation of the face and where it collides, unveiling a message of crisis through media art from a hermeneutic and cultural perspective. The research focuses on the case study CV Dazzle anti-face (2010-ongoing) by new media artist Adam Harvey. The analysis consists of two parts combining two methods: formal analysis and critical code reading. The first part focuses on the artistic properties of the CV Dazzle anti-face and the second part on the functional properties in relation to the code it is interfacing with. The combination of these two reveals how CV Dazzle is interfacing with the technology and how this reflects a socio-technical critique showing a new onto-epistemological shift of the face and that we need a new way of looking and understanding the face in this invisible technological realm. CV Dazzle is exemplary of how the new media art can make tangible this invisible realm where faces are flowing through space and times in tiny fractions and therefore be a catalysator of this debate.