The Recognition Machine has been a welcome guest in the huge corridor of Brussels’ cultural gem Cinema Nova.
In the age of facial recognition, here’s a machine that questions some of our anthropometric practices. Similar to a photo booth, the “recognition machine” invites visitors to take a photo of themselves. The photo activates an algorithm that attempts to establish links between the recorded pixels and those in a database of images of 19th-century colonized people. Then the machine prints your portrait with the faces the algorithm associates it with. A disturbing experiment that links contemporary surveillance regimes with those of a colonial past. A QR code leads you to the colonial database and an invitation to comment.
The Recognition Machine is a creation by artists Antje Van Wichelen and Michael Murtaugh, backed by the collectives Troubled Archives and ICV.
https://recognitionmachine.vandal.ist