Design Talk | Exploring A.I.: Data Portraits
Channel: Cooper Hewitt
Date: 2019-12-05

What does it feel like to have your face registered as a data point? To be seen or evaluated by a computer? While artificial intelligence has become a pervasive technology in our daily lives, it often goes unnoticed.

Artists and designers Luke Dubois, Zach Lieberman, and Jessica Helfand discuss their work within the larger context of A.I. development and the phenomenon facial recognition with Ellen Lupton, curator of Face Values and Senior Curator of Contemporary Design at Cooper Hewitt.

About the Artists:
R. Luke DuBois explores temporal, verbal and visual structures through music, art and technology. He is the director of the Brooklyn Experimental Media Center at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, where he and his students explore the implications of new technologies for individuals and society. His work expands the limits of portraiture in the digital age by linking human identity to data and social networks.

Jessica Helfand is founding editor of Design Observer, she is the author of numerous books on design and cultural criticism, including Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media and Visual Culture (2001), Scrapbooks: An American History (2008) and Design: The Invention of Desire (2016). Her new book—Face: A Visual Odyssey (MIT Press, 2019) is available for purchase from SHOP Cooper Hewitt.

Zachary Lieberman uses technology to augment the body’s ability to communicate. He is the creator of openFrameworks, a tool for creative coding, and he is founder of the School for Poetic Computation in Brooklyn. EyeWriter, an eye-tracking interface designed for people with paralysis, won Design of the Year (Interactive) 2010 from the London Design Museum. Lieberman’s work actively explores the human face as a controller and interface for software.