How artists are employing cubist face paint to thwart facial recognition
As evening falls in London, Georgina Rowlands and Anna Hart start off applying makeup. Rather than lipstick and eyeliner, they're covering their faces with geometric shapes.
Rowlands has long narrow blue triangles and thin light rectangles criss-crossing her deal with. Hart has a collection of crimson, orange and bright white angular designs on hers. The technique is named CV Dazzle.
They're two of the four founders of the Dazzle Club, several artists set up this past year to provoke discussion about the developing using of facial recognition technology.
The group holds regular silent walks through different parts of London to raise awareness about the technology, which they say has been used for ``rampant surveillance.'' Other worries include its insufficient regulation, inaccuracy and how it impacts public spaces.
The CV Dazzle technique, developed by artist and researcher Adam Harvey, is aimed at camouflaging against facial detection systems, which turn images of faces into mathematical formulas that can be analyzed by algorithms. CV Dazzle - where CV can be short for computer perspective - uses cubist-inspired styles to thwart the pc, said Rowlands.
``We often go for blacks and whites, incredibly contrasting colors, because you're trying to wreck havoc on the shadows and highlights of that person,'' she said.
A similar strategy was used extensively in Globe War We to camouflage Uk naval ships and confuse opponents about the actual heading or located area of the ships.
To check that their designs work, they utilize the simple face recognition feature on the smartphone cameras..
The rise of facial recognition technology is being tested and spreading in produced democracies after aggressive use in a few extra authoritarian countries like China.
Opposition to algorithmic surveillance isn't limited by Britain. Russia activists had been reportedly arrested last month for holding a similar face color protest over Moscow's facial reputation video cameras. Hong Kong pro-democracy activists routinely use face masks in street protests to cover up their identities. Rights teams in Serbia and Uganda include opposed government projects to install Chinese-supplied cameras.
Other designers attended up with countermeasures just like sunglasses that reflect infrared light to blind cameras.
London police recently began using live facial recognition cameras on operational deployments. The other day officers arrested a female wanted for assault following the cams picked her out of a road crowd on a active shopping street. Law enforcement say latest technology is needed to keep the public safe and sound and images of innocent persons are deleted immediately.
Consumer attitudes to facial recognition technology in Britain seem to be mixed, according to one survey this past year, which found most of the people said they don't really know enough about any of it but practically half said they must be able to opt out.
Source: www.deccanchronicle.com
