Facescapes is a collaborative website and critical resource guide dedicated to understanding the growth of facial recognition technology in the United States. It was created by Avery Jonas, Courtney Miller, and Craig Nielsen, who are MSLIS students at Pratt Institute. It analyzes the recent usage of the technology by corporate and state actors, and aims to provide a framework for assessing the implications of contemporary and future developments in the industry. It explores political, theoretical, and artistic engagements related to facial recognition technology, with a critical eye toward possibilities for disruption and intervention.
The inspiration for Facescapes came from a critical assessment of the time of its inception. A year burdened by a pandemic, a movement for Black lives and a historic election, has exposed the failures of our state including the commodification and invasion of citizens' data and privacy through various technologies. Facescapes zeroes in on only one aspect of surveillance capitalism. Our hope is for our users to take the content of this guide and apply it as a foundation to their exploration of topic as well as to their much-needed counter-surveillance praxes.