Masking Machine

M Eifler aka BlinkPopShift

2018

Dimensions Variable

Phone photos with recursive AI distortion

The Masking Machine is a color digital photography series using machine learning to create masks of the artist's face. Each image begins as a simple selfie. Next the images are fed into a landmark detection algorithm, which finds the position of the subject's facial features. Using this data, the AI applies a layer of digital makeup, contact lenses, or glasses. The artist then feeds this new image back into the landmark detection algorithm and begins again, cycling through this process several times to build the series' eerie distorted masks. These dynamic masks highlight the shifting terrains of identity, disability representation, and digital technologies.

A series of digitally manipulated selfies mounted on a yellow wall. In varying sizes, each image captures the artist's face layered with digital make-up. This digital make-up produce a synthetic effect - brightly colored lips and eyes, cartoonishly rendered, proliferate against the photorealistic map of their face, sometimes smudging and veering into the background. Image credit: Richard Lomibao.