Sliding into a face: aesthetics and politics of image recognition

What happened to the face? The list is long of what computers do with faces. Applying filters, they improve facial aesthetics. Computers also detect faces in pictures – they identify people, they reconstruct faces based on data, they correlate faces and other data, they predict the evolution of a face.

The face is not a given, it is always under construction. It only exists as a face as long as we have the right apparatus to perceive it and the right configuration. The face can escape and elude perception (as in the case of prosopagnosia). A long process of reconstruction and archeology may be necessary to make it re-emerge from traces (as in forensics practices). At the same time, the face is under a permanent scrutiny that produces discrimination and stigmatisation.

How to detect a face, to construct one and to evade from one are not necessarily oppositional questions. The face becomes a space where different strategies and forces are active. Panel participants will articulate different responses where the networked image is solicited in various ways. And redefined in the process.

Curated by artist and educator Nicolas Malevé
with Federica Biotti, Zach Blas, and Andrew Murray

Presented in partnership with the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image, London Southbank University