FR SURVEILLANCE PORTRAIT: PIERRE MARTIN
Pierre Martin was tried and convicted in 2014 in Chicago’s first prosecutorial case using facial recognition as judiciary evidence
This work was realized in early 2022. At the time of Pierre Martin’s arrest and conviction in 2014, facial detection algorithms downsampled images in order to make algorithmic processing more efficient, resulting in the pixels relating to the actual face being reduced down to as little as 15x22 pixels. FR Surveillance Portrait attempts to make visible this obscured process by creating an installation that asks if anyone can be recognized at this resolution, let alone be tried and convicted. Each square mirrored tile represents one pixel of Pierre Martin’s down sampled image, recreated by me using Photoshop’s threshold and image size features. The sculpture also has a few interactive components, including two QR Codes, one that takes you to a news report about Pierre Martin’s conviction through the use of facial recognition technology, and the other to an Instagram filter I designed that allows participants to experience this downsampling technique with their own face.
Documentation of installation at Brown Arts Institute Staff Exhibition: After Hours
Interactive Components
There were two interactive components in this piece, both consisting of scannable QR codes. One QR code took you to an article written by the Verge to provide some context for the piece. The second to an Instagram Filter I designed where participants could submit their own FR Surveillance Portraits:
QR Code 1: Brought participants to this Verge Article about the Pierre Martin conviction. The article calls into question how exactly facial recognition technology was used in the case and questions somewhat if this conviction wasn’t more of a construed political win for the Chicago Police Department.
QR Code 2: Brought participants to an Augmented Reality Instagram filter I made which replicates the downsampling process in early FR systems while using the participants own face via front facing camera as the image to be downsampled. (See below)
Instagram Filter
As a component of this piece, I created an Instagram filter using Meta Spark Studio allowing users to participate in their own experience of the downsampling process. The actual AR filter is delayed with a short video about Pierre Martin.
user submitted portrait on instagram
Try it yourself. scan the QR code with your mobile device or if you are on a mobile device, click on this link instead. Tip: You may need to scan twice if you haven’t opened instagram recently.
