David Lankhorst

* De oorspronkelijke Engelse versie van deze tekst is wegens artistieke overwegingen behouden.

Face value invites users to compete in an interactive installation closely familiar to trends/challenges we see daily on social media. By competing to achieve the best possible smile users will be assigned scores and be placed on a ranked scoreboard. Slowly but surely this scoreboard starts to fill up with many different faces. Unbeknownst to the participants they aid in building a database of faces that could be used for third party gain.

Participants will discover later on during their tour trough the exhibition something resembling a webshop. This webshop appears to be a marketplace filled with items that have participants faces plastered over them. By the time they realize these faces match the faces on the scoreboard its already too late. They have been literally turned into a product.

By stripping away many layers in a complicated process Face Value showcases how your personal data (face) can be used for nefarious purposes without the participant knowing they have voluntarily contributed towards a growing system against their own interests. In this case Face Value doesn’t necessarily highlights how your behavior influences the marketing targeted towards you but instead highlights: “If something is free, you’re the product”.

By carelessly participating in social media trends and putting your face out there for the world to see you will not only be targeted but also used for Ai learning models. With the current rampant AI growth carelessness is now more dangerous then ever.

We should ask ourselves: "Why are we voluntarily optimizing our own commodification?”

Specifications
Made using HTML5, CSS and JS libraries including Mediapipe.
Running on a self build Node.JS server.