My collaborative art+tech #hactivist experiment with Lauri Love for @disruptionnetworklab ‘s conference on Artivism: The Art of Subverting Power.

An interactive tool to teach Computer Vision Dazzle aka anti-surveillance makeup. Designed to break machine vision systems, this subversively placed art installation satirises the beauty industry and reveals a critique of surveillance capitalism in advertising. Furthermore, for activists planning to take direct action, experimenting with DAZZLE one can create a custom template of camouflage applicable against modern advances in police surveillance tech -testing against 6 of the most prominently used facial recognition systems.

“Cameras multiply as surveillance becomes omnipresent, data is invasively collected and commodified without consent. The human face is tracked, profiled, herded.

Enter DAZZLE, an interactive tool for the reclamation of agency. Designed to break machine-learning facial recognition models, this subversive salon experience satirises the beauty industry to reveal a critique of surveillance as a tool of capitalism and the state.

Observe, frustrate and defeat realistic facial detection and recognition systems. Emerge as a certified enigma with a camouflaged look analysis report giving quantitative data that empowers you to reclaim your own.”

Here are some examples of non-consensual metadata sets gathered for advertisers. They create a user profile - which can be linked to our face and identified through surveillance:

// Demographics: age, gender, race, location, education, employment status
// Psychographics: interests, hobbies, lifestyle, values, personality traits, employment status, emotional response
// Behavioural Patterns: online browsing and purchasing behavior, social media engagement, time spent on pages/posts, click-through rates, content creation/consumption habits
// Social Graph: user's friends, family, influencers they follow, groups they belong to, the interactions within these social circles
// Economic Status: income bracket, spending habits, preferred brands, price sensitivity, financial decision-making patterns
// Life Events: graduation, marriage status, childbirth, moving city or country, starting a new job, etc.
// Political and Social Beliefs: political leanings, social issues of concern, activism and donation habits
// Health and Wellness: dietary preferences, fitness habits, medical conditions, mental health, analysis and biometrics

We are still working on developing it further to be open sourced / a website that can be accessible to all, so you can try it too!

A low tech version of this will be popping up in Glastonbury 2025 at the Greenpeace Fields!

Special thank you to my brother @adam_tylicki for creating the 3D model in Metahuman.

DAZZLE: the facelessness of the resistance!