As cameras become more prevalent around us, I began to wonder what purpose they served and how we would have to live in a society with them. From home security systems to government cameras, the spread of surveillance is glaringly obvious.
Aside from advocating against surveillance cameras, I believe that the way to adjust to growing rates of hyper surveillance is to introduce anti-surveillance tactics into our everyday life. While cameras use different systems to detect faces, the most common advice from different tech sites is to cover the defining features of the face. However, facial disorientation is only one type of anti-surveillance fashion.
Using recycled and repurposed materials, I created different facial disorientation products that achieve this goal. I used everyday household items like tablecloths and old clothes I had at home to cover high points of my face to disorient where my facial features are.
The normalization of facial disorientation fashion is especially important now more than ever because the people who are being surveilled the most are not white. In Lancaster City, a community of only 50,000 people there are over 150 cameras. Lancaster City is a little under 50% white,16% Black and 39% Hispanic according to the 2010 census. Black and Hispanic families are located in different densities across the city while the majority of the white population exists in the North East section of the city. The first cameras were installed in the Southern sector of the city and eventually moved North according to Lancaster Safety Coalition.
The Lancaster Safety Coalition is a private non-profit in charge of installing and operating the cameras. They owe their beginnings to the fear that violence was increasing in Lancaster City in the early 2000s because of drug use. This misguided fear needs to be called into question, since several published studies indicated that the increase of violence was attributed to domestic violence, not drug use. Although the LSC does not use facial recognition software, the accelerated growth of surveillance cameras in a small city is concerning. Cities like NYC have hyper surveilled Black and Brown communities because of racist stereotypes. As Lancaster City adopts similar policies, the installation of cameras can be argued to be rooted in the same racist stereotypes rather than the actual safety of people.
Hiding your facial features is very unconventional. This is especially true for non-white people, such as Muslim women who are consistently condemned for wearing Niqabs and Black Americans who have to fear for their personal safety if they disguise their faces. As anti-surveillance fashion is accepted and becomes increasingly normalized it can allow more people to engage in facial disorientation without fear. Obviously, this is not possible for everyone but items like the pearl glasses I created that cover only part of the face while remaining more conventional are the beginnings of facial anti-surveillance. I want everyone to be able to make facial disorientation products with any items they have on hand. Most importantly I want everyone to be safe to wear these as fashion garments and maintain a sense of personal privacy.
