From Your Face

Save face? About face? In your face? A Chicago artist has decided to have some fun with digital surveillance – he’s printed and is selling a realistic mask of his own face for your public enjoyment.

The idea isn’t to steal his girlfriend for the night but to confuse the hell out of facebook and all the other digital surveillance programs running around us. His mask has been tested with facial recognition software, and the goal of his project is to test, poke, and otherwise undermine the creepy future predicted in Minority Report:

He insists all products will be sold at cost, with no profit made and all proceeds going to sustain the effort to keep surveillance in the public discourse.

“To be clear, I am not anti-surveillance. What I am pushing for is increasing the amount of public discourse about surveillance and how it affects our behavior in public space. When we are watched we are fundamentally changed. We perform rather than be.”

The group is also working on open-source facial-encryption software that replaces faces in video with the artists is currently in the prototype stage  and will eventually become available as a free download from the URME website.