The Operative Moment of a Facial Recognition Technology: Data, Portrait, Moving Image with Aaron Tucker
- Date: Thursday, January 28, 2021 - 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM
Facial recognition technologies' (FRTs) specific forms of biopolitical vision are dangerous due to the mechanisms of observation that lie at the centre of its operative moment. These multi-temporal combinations of storage, data transfer, and computation are present within other contemporary digital biometrics. But looking closer at FRTs in particular shows how the initial vision accomplished by the camera is complicated by, first, software aimed at face detection, then, second, the identification mechanisms that are augmented by AI and robust data practices. This layering of observation mediates the technology so that it can be operationalized as an effective tactic of governmentality and biopolitical management. Its deployment of biopolitical vision reduces those under its gaze to numerical and calculable materials which are more easily bureaucratically managed under the service of governmentality. Its alarming effectiveness is secured by its cooperation with other biopolitical visualities and the modes through which biopolitical reason is inscribed into the technology.
Aaron Tucker is currently a PhD candidate in the Cinema and Media Studies Department at York University where he is an Elia Scholar, a VISTA doctoral Scholar and a 2020 Joseph-Armand Bombardier doctoral fellow. He is currently studying the cinema of facial recognition software and its impacts on citizenship, mobility and crisis.
CONTACT INFO:
Please email culturalstudies-phd@trentu.ca to receive the Zoom invitation.
Posted on January 5, 2021