It’s a Face-eat-face World

The presentation will begin with a brief history of facial recognition to synthetic facial data, preceded by a screening of the 11-minute video essay, It’s a Face-eat-face World. Beginning with a digital scan of the artist’s own face, the video essay recounts the invention of facial recognition and the emergence of synthetic datasets, in which deepfakes and computer-generated faces are increasingly positioned to replace real-world images as training material for facial recognition systems. The narrative unfolds through unsettling visuals – a face eating another face, a digital twin traversing a vast abstract landscape that is ultimately revealed to be an enlarged, topographical version of the artist’s face.