In a bid to bring forth the conversation regarding mass surveillance and the privacy of one’s image in a public setting, designer Ewa Nowak has created a mask that renders the human face unrecognizable to facial recognition systems.
Called Incognito, the mask is made from brass and is composed of three elements that contour the shape of a face.
“Every day, hundreds of cameras are watching us, facial recognition systems are becoming more and more perfect, and the place of current speculations about the future is occupied by sophisticated and advanced technology,” said Nowak.
“Cameras are able to recognise our age, mood, or sex and precisely match us to the database – the concept of disappearing in the crowd ceases to exist,” added Nowak. “This has a huge value in the form of increased security and detection of dangerous units. On the other hand, in which direction will the surveillance of society develop?”
To test Incognito, Nowak uploaded images of people wearing the mask onto Facebook and utilized a deep learning facial recognition system called DeepFace. Developed by a research team at Facebook, DeepFace is capable of identifying human faces in digital images with 97.35% accuracy.
“This project was preceded by a long-term study on the shape, size and location of mask elements, so that it actually fulfilled its task,” said Nowak.
