This session is facilitated by COMUZI
About this session
Our speculative provocation is an invisible mask which people could wear to counter the surveillance effects of facial recognition technologies. Our provocation centres around a critical examination of the attack on human agency and autonomy by facial recognition technologies utilised in public security environments.
The artwork aims to question our future relationship with fashion, exploring the role that fashion will play as a protective tool against surveillance culture. The speculative provocation has taken inspiration from the activists in Hong Kong who have been engaging in protests, using laser beams to deter facial recognition cameras.
The Invisible Mask is part of the conversation regarding “algorithmic anxiety”, inspired by artists such as Zach Blas, Adam Harvey and Sterling Crispin who have created artworks that consider and critique the algorithmic normativities that materialize in facial recognition technologies. Our artwork reiterates and makes real a modernist conception of the self when people conjure an imagination of Big Brother surveillance.
We hope with our provocation, we can begin to explore beyond such more conventional critiques of algorithmic normativities, and invite reflection on ways of relating to technology beyond the affirmation of the liberal, privacy-obsessed self.