Imagery as Insight: Blending Contemporary Art Practice and HIVE to Highlight the Risks of AI-based Facial Recognition
At Stanford University’s Hana Immersive Visualization Environment (HIVE) in the Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center, a new experimental artwork titled Landmarks was developed, tested, and exhibited by visiting artist and researcher Shannon Novak. The work, sponsored by the Stanford Center for AI Safety and Stanford Department of Art & Art History, blended AI and contemporary art to illuminate the risks of AI-driven facial recognition. Part of a campus-wide solo exhibition by Novak titled Trust. Me., this work harnessed advanced AI to map facial landmarks - eyes, nose, mouth - and transformed them into generative visuals. The unpredictable, shifting, abstract compositions mirrored the abstraction of machine code and were generated by programming similar to that used in leading AI facial recognition systems, revealing the potential for misclassification and overgeneralisation.
This video depicts, "Landmarks: Anatomy I". 68 Points, by Shannon Novak, includes generative animation works, each made of 68 points (or landmarks) that explore and expose the weaponisation of AI-based facial recognition to analyse queer bodies in different ways. These were shown on campus using the HANA Immersive Visualisation Environment (HIVE).
