Feb 5, 2023
CV Dazzle Experiment, 2020
seen from Singapore
seen from India
seen from Malaysia
seen from Kenya
seen from Argentina
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from Israel
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Spain
seen from Singapore
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from Malaysia
seen from China
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
CV Dazzle Experiment, 2020
be invisible, do crimes
oc moodboard for @catsnuggie !
1 2 3 / 4 5 6 / 7 8 9
Worried about face-detection technology? CV Dazzle uses highly stylized face makeup and hair styling to protect the wearer against the technology that identifies people based on the mathematical relationships of key facial features. This work helps us think more about how privacy might be achieved through certain aesthetic actions in near futures. Learn more in "Designs for Different Futures." "CV Dazzle: Camouflage from Face Detection," 2017, designed by Adam Harvey, photographed by Cha Hyun-Seok
So since people are in quarantine with nothing to do, I thought I’d share a fun activity that you can do as long as you’ve got some makeup (or anything else that you’re willing to put on your face,) spare time, and any camera with facial recognition (we just used our phone cameras to see if they put the focus box on our faces.)
It’s inspired by CV Dazzle, a project that “explores how fashion can be used as camouflage from face-detection technology.” You may have seen some pictures of the unusual looks they created to avoid facial recognition.
Pretty cool, right? Well, their website has some tips for how to create your own look that messes with facial recognition.
My partner and I decided to try it out, and ended up concocting an elaborate fiction to give us guidelines for our looks. It went something like this:
We’re space criminals on our way to rob the high security Galactic Bank. The Galactic Bank has human guards who make sure you’re not doing anything tricky like wearing a mask to subvert the facial recognition systems. The human guards watch you through cameras the entire time you’re in the bank, so there’s no chance for you to just put on a mask once you pass them.
The vault area is equipped with a facial recognition system. When it sees a face, it cross references it with the faces associated with the bank’s accounts. If the face matches an account holder, the system will ignore them, unless they try to enter someone else’s vault, at which point it will shoot them with lasers. If the system sees a face of someone who’s not an account holder in the vault, it will shoot them with lasers. This ensures maximum security while still leaving the banking process completely seamless for the wealthy elites who don’t want to waste time unlocking their vaults.
The flaw in this system is that the human guards don’t have access to the logs of the security system, because they’re part of the underprivileged working class that isn’t allowed to interface with computers (the major class divide in this future society, we decided, is based on computer literacy.) The human guards can’t tell what the facial recognition system makes of the input it receives. They can only see the input (people inside the vault) and the output (are those people currently being lasered to death.)
The goal, then, is to create a look that appears to be High Fashion so the human guards won’t question it, but that leaves the computers unable to recognize that a human face is present.
We found that hair loops that crossed the face and emo bangs were especially effective, and looked very stylish when combined with geometric shapes drawn on your face and lipstick that only covers part of your lip. (We also found that one of the many makeup products that I put somewhere it wasn’t supposed to go caused a mild allergic reaction, so watch out for that.) I didn’t have contour makeup, so I wasn’t able to experiment with that, but I bet contouring your face in weird ways would help too.
Anyway, go forth, have fun, and by the time the guards realize there’s something wrong, you’ll already be halfway across the galaxy delivering the stolen data chip to the Resistance!
Privacy campaigners bid to beat police facial recognition plans by wearing ‘dazzle’ makeup
the signs as anti-facial detection fashion
aka various artists’ makeup/hair/fashion ensembles designed to prevent facial detection software from identifying you; although before you go out and copy these, they might not work anymore.
sources: CV Dazzle; Leo Selvaggio; Grigory Bakunov; Adam Harvey; Japan’s National Institute of Informatics. credit for suggestion: bruno (you too can suggest a post!)
ARIES:
TAURUS: Does not need it; their anti-face detection strategy is never leaving the house
GEMINI:
CANCER:
LEO:
VIRGO:
LIBRA:
SCORPIO:
SAGITTARIUS:
CAPRICORN:
AQUARIUS:
PISCES:
