Vanishing Portrait Series: The Ghost, The Label, The Identity

Vanishing Portrait Series: The Ghost, The Label, The Identity

Vanishing Portrait Series: The Ghost, The Label, The Identity

The Vanishing Portrait is a series of interactive videos that was inspired by by the book, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Noble. The artwork was created to bring awareness of how errors in today’s technologies can have severe outcomes on female minorities. The artwork comments on how tech companies have continued the history of discrimination.

For example, The Identity comments on how the Google searches have created a negative impact on the identity structures of asian women. Not only when you search “Asian Girls” you will see pornographic information but also when you search for “women” or “girl” there are hardly any images of Asian women. How does this effect society’s perception of them? What happens to when a young girl googles herself and finds that her identity is seen as a sexual object?  

The Label comments on how technology and social media have discriminated against African American women. That is, Instagram offers over twenty filters but most of them lighten the skin (now Instagram has changed and has diversified their filters). Most facial recognition (AI) software and some webcams (HP) can’t detect dark skin. In 2015 Google introduced an image-recognition algorithm (in Flickr) that would automatically label pictures of black people as “gorillas”. The fashion industry itself type-casts African American models in urban and street scenes. Therefore, social media and technology has perpetuated the racist labeling of African American women.

The Ghost comments on the whitewashing history of portraiture and how our current technologies echo these biases. For example, the Renaissance whitewashed many portraits of famous colored men and women. Kodak’s colored film in pre-1970s only offered film that would work on lighter skin. Fashion ads were caught lightening the skin of African American women as we saw in L’Oreal’s Beyoncé in 2008. An algorithm (Beauty.AI), judged a beauty contest and the 44 winners were of fair skin women. All of the selected photos that were submitted to the algorithm, did not reflect a diverse set of data to make a proper analysis. Why? Primarily, white men were the ones submitting the images. The Ghost comments on this perpetual history of whitewashing portraiture.

By continuing the history of whitewashing of technologies, we as a society, a collective, are continuing the history of discrimination. This not only effects how society sees the beautification of women’s bodies on the surface level, but also effects how society views women as sexual objects and how the color of their skin categorizes them. These are acts of sexism and discrimination that can impact the self confidence of our future generation of women. Therefore, we must, as a society, hold these technology companies accountable for their inept systems. Change will only happen with direct action, empowerment, and empathy.

The Vanishing Portrait is in the permanent collection of the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

The Vanishing Portrait is a series of interactive videos that was inspired by by the book, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Noble. The artwork was created to bring awareness of how errors in today’s technologies can have severe outcomes on female minorities. The artwork comments on how tech companies have continued the history of discrimination.

For example, The Identity comments on how the Google searches have created a negative impact on the identity structures of asian women. Not only when you search “Asian Girls” you will see pornographic information but also when you search for “women” or “girl” there are hardly any images of Asian women. How does this effect society’s perception of them? What happens to when a young girl googles herself and finds that her identity is seen as a sexual object?  

The Label comments on how technology and social media have discriminated against African American women. That is, Instagram offers over twenty filters but most of them lighten the skin (now Instagram has changed and has diversified their filters). Most facial recognition (AI) software and some webcams (HP) can’t detect dark skin. In 2015 Google introduced an image-recognition algorithm (in Flickr) that would automatically label pictures of black people as “gorillas”. The fashion industry itself type-casts African American models in urban and street scenes. Therefore, social media and technology has perpetuated the racist labeling of African American women.

The Ghost comments on the whitewashing history of portraiture and how our current technologies echo these biases. For example, the Renaissance whitewashed many portraits of famous colored men and women. Kodak’s colored film in pre-1970s only offered film that would work on lighter skin. Fashion ads were caught lightening the skin of African American women as we saw in L’Oreal’s Beyoncé in 2008. An algorithm (Beauty.AI), judged a beauty contest and the 44 winners were of fair skin women. All of the selected photos that were submitted to the algorithm, did not reflect a diverse set of data to make a proper analysis. Why? Primarily, white men were the ones submitting the images. The Ghost comments on this perpetual history of whitewashing portraiture.

By continuing the history of whitewashing of technologies, we as a society, a collective, are continuing the history of discrimination. This not only effects how society sees the beautification of women’s bodies on the surface level, but also effects how society views women as sexual objects and how the color of their skin categorizes them. These are acts of sexism and discrimination that can impact the self confidence of our future generation of women. Therefore, we must, as a society, hold these technology companies accountable for their inept systems. Change will only happen with direct action, empowerment, and empathy.

The Vanishing Portrait is in the permanent collection of the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

The three interactive videos are each installed on a 49" 4K UHD screen. The dimensions of the screens have a height of 24 inches and a width of 42.6 inches. Each screen has a small pc computer. The Ghost uses a web cam and Google AI for detections. All three works of art were created using a variety of software, including Touch Designer.

The three interactive videos are each installed on a 49" 4K UHD screen. The dimensions of the screens have a height of 24 inches and a width of 42.6 inches. Each screen has a small pc computer. The Ghost uses a web cam and Google AI for detections. All three works of art were created using a variety of software, including Touch Designer.

https://vanishingportrait.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8MGDjkQnMw&feature=youtu.be

https://www.tiffanytrenda.com

Tiffany Trenda is a performance/new media artist based out of Los Angeles. She received her BFA from Art Center College of Design and her MFA from the University of California Los Angeles, Design and Media Arts program. Trenda won Artist of the Year at the London International Creative Competition Awards in 2008. Then, in 2009, she introduced “Entropy” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She was invited to perform at the 2010 World Expo, in Shanghai, China at the British Pavilion. She also performed at the Broad Art Museum, Scope Art Fair, A+D Museum, Los Angeles Contemporary Art Exhibitions, Boulder Contemporary Art Museum, and the Italian Cultural Institute. Trenda was included in the performance program at the Metamorphoses of the Virtual – 100 Years of Art and Freedom during the 55th annual Venice Biennale. Trenda has exhibited at the Faena Art Center in Buenos Aires for the highly publicized show, “Auto Body,” and her work was included in the special projects section for Context Art Miami. In 2017 she exhibited at the Laboratorio Arte Alameda in Mexico City and was on a panel for SXSW. More recently, her work was included in “Neotopia” at Art Center Nabi in South Korea and the permanent collection of the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

Tiffany Trenda: Artist

United States