Exhibitions, Research, Criticism, Commentary
A chronology of 3,585 references across art, science, technology, and culture
“Data breaches are a perpetual concern with any data collection. Biometrics magnify that risk because your face cannot be reset, unlike a password or credit card number.”
“Given their ambiguity, these statutes could and very well may be abused as a political tool to block LGBTQ content, medically accurate information about abortion, and other such material.”
“You’re asking millions of people to submit sensitive information to access legal content. That opens the door to leaks, abuse, and misuse of data.”
As protests against ICE raids engulf Los Angeles, software artist Kyle McDonald reactivates his ICEspy (2018) counter surveillance tool. The web app that reveals the identity of ICE employees by matching hundreds of scraped LinkedIn profiles was disabled in 2024, when Microsoft, a known ICE contractor, restricted access to its face recognition API. Now, the site is operational again, “running fully on-device,” McDonald announces on social media.
Kashmir Hill
Your Face Belongs to Us
Commissioned for the annual Arnsberg Kultursommer festivities, German media artist Aram Bartholl invites the visitors of Arnsberg’s historic city hall to a Hypernormalization photo session. After having their portrait taken and analysed by a custom face recognition software (provided by Tom-Lucas Säger), participants get to chose an emoji, font, and colour to have their face ‘de-recognized.’ The results are then printed on fine art paper for people to take home.
“One of the more exciting calls I get as an artist working in the field of new media is for editorial illustration work. It’s rare.” In a Medium post, software artist Zach Lieberman unpacks the cover and secondary artworks he created for this week’s New York Times Magazine. To accompany Kashmir Hill’s deep dive on Clearview AI and face recognition, Lieberman built on an earlier face fragmentation sketch, because “it feels like these companies are building portraits of us that are unsettlingly made from disparate pieces.”
“It was a remarkable turn of events. The relationships behind Clearview AI had germinated at an event celebrating Trump. Now, four years later, the app was being deployed in a domestic crackdown on lawbreaking Trump supporters.”
American media artist Kyle McDonald posts a lengthy rumination on his latest project Facework, “a game that imagines a world where face analysis is key to the latest gig economy app,” within the wider artistic and sociopolitical context of facial recognition. Citing works by Trevor Paglen, Sondra Perry, Paolo Cirio, and others, he traces the evolution of surveillance tech, and discusses the nuances of artistic work produced with them (image: Christian Möller’s 2003 installation Cheese).
“She was the first person to realize that this problem exists, to talk about it, and do academic work around it until the powers that be took notice.”
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