URME Surveillance

Anti Face-Rec art project by Leo Selvaggio where he offers his facial likeness as surveillant data disinformation - video embedded below:

URME represents artist-driven, anti-surveillance devices made for the public. Working as an artist in Chicago, the most widely surveilled city in the nation, and seeing how it has affect the way I behave and think about public space, I have an overwhelming urge to protect the public from such surveillance …

… I have researched several of the strategies out there and there are two major themes. You can either wear a ski mask and hide your face, which looks very suspicious or you can destroy private or public property vis-a-vis security cameras. URME offers a different way. With facial recognition technology being widely used now a days, rather try to hide or obscure one’s face from the camera, these devices allow you to present a different, alternative identity to the camera, my own. When you wear these devices the cameras will track me instead of you and your actions in public space will be attributed as mine because it will be me the cameras see. All URME devices have been tested for facial recognition and each properly identifies the wearer of me on facebook, which has some of the most sophisticated facial recognition software around.