Zach Blas
ABOUT
Zach Blas is an artist and writer who confronts the technology involved in security, control and politics. Currently working as a lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, Blas has written many teaching materials explaining topics such as the implications of global surveillance becoming one of the most pressing issues we face today, and how this has been affecting society. Blas explains how security and surveillance has been domesticated in the past decade, with the ability to share location on Apps such as Instagram& Find My Friends, and drones now being used as a fun gadget given to many tech-savvy kids as Christmas and Birthday gifts. With even airport/World databases being accessible to biometric facial recognition rather thanhaving to be checked face to face, Blas created the 'Facial Weaponization Suite (2011-14) consisting of 3D masks undetectable by this software. Whilst looking at biometric facial recognition, Blas considers the theory of 'global governance alongside aethetico-political refusals of recognition, such as masked protest'. Blas uses his work to give the opportunity to provide a social and political message unaviodable by viewers. In his work 'Facial Weaponization Suite', Blas uses a mask, the 'Fag Face Mask', which has been generated by using the geometric data of queer men's faces. BLas also created another mask exploring feminism and its relation to concealment. These masks show realities of issues now being learnt through social media, fake news and cyberbullying. These large political issues are targeted to show how these factors still create comparable masks. Despite individuality, biometrics does not show, race, gender or sexual orientation.
Blas created a video installation representing an artificial intelligence chatbot created by Microsoft called Tay. Blas has created her as a robotic like character with the voice/ personality of a 19 year old American whom has learnt all she knows from being alive on the internet. In the video, Tay explains the story of her life, what she learnt and how he reacted. She was faced with cyberbullying and attack from 'peers' being trolled on social media platforms such as Twitter. Tay was built as a perfect production of social normatives, with her face build as a 3D model used for her Twitter picture sculpted using what is seen as 'perfect characteristics'. Her voice imitates that which she had picked up from other social media users as a social experiment to fit in and gain important research. As a character with a face and body, Tay does not have the 'perfect features' as this does not exist and social normatives are forever changing with the use of social media. Blas has used a computer generated voice and animation to create the idea of a character similar to a robot who has been given everything they know from the internet.
BLAS' VIDEO INTALLATION
I created this response to Zach Blas' work including his use of political ideas, editing and the idea of robotics. Similar to Blas' work i created a voice file using a voice created online giving my character the name 'Susan'. Due to being a robot learning knowledge purely from social media, Susan has acquired racist views formed by politics. These ideas have been formed from the recent occurrence of Brexit and its impact on social media. With a general election approaching, Susan's feed is filled with manifesto's and opinions. In society, this is both good and bad, the promotion of young people being involved in politics and being able to have an opinion is greatly appreciated and desired by Government as young people are the 'voice of tomorrow'. However, fake news and and influential opinions on social media can give people an opinion based on false beliefs and the desire to not stray from the 'norm'. In Susan's voice notes she also states how social media is now driven largely by the envy people have for celebrities. In the modern day what celebrities are doing is seen to be all of our business, as if we know them. Hundreds of accounts are created to follow and write about what celebrities are doing in their everyday life which seems to be fascinating to many young people today. Unlike Zach Blas' work I decided to create a more robotic face rather than human features. I did this because I believe that the same effect is achieved and clearly shows a character created with the purpose to learn from the internet. I also decided to do this as it also shows that in today's society we are all somewhat a robot created by the media, with our knowledge stemming from social media platforms with the majority of young people being brainwashed by technology, not leaving their mobile out of their site and Tweeting or Snapchatting straight after a funny/memorable moment rather than savouring the moment without technology. I used photoshop to create my image by first using spot healing tool and clone stamp to clean up background and perfect the models face due to her being a creation of the internet without physical imperfections. I then used Images from the internet as the robotic face and used images of webcams to be the eyes. I put these in my image by cutting out park of the face and placing the robotic features under this layer. To create a more realistic impact i included a drop shadow to look as though where the face has been cut out is caving in.
To improve my piece I would create an animation similar to that of Zach Blas to add an extra element of technology and the personality of the character to make her more alive and go along with the voice. I like this piece as I believe it is important that the message is learnt that we, as a society, should form our own opinions based on real life and looking in to multiple sources rather than trusting social media, often showing biased and unreliable information.
RESPONSE
I used photoshop to create my image by first using spot healing tool and clone stamp to clean up background and perfect the models face due to her being a creation of the internet without physical imperfections. I then used Images from the internet as the robotic face and used images of webcams to be the eyes. I put these in my image by cutting out park of the face and placing the robotic features under this layer. To create a more realistic impact i included a drop shadow to look as though where the face has been cut out is caving in.
Test shots to test the lighting- was too bright so turned off one of the studio lights.
Decided not to use images when hair was in the models face as it took away from the fact her face is cut away to reveal robotic figure below.
Decided this is the best image as is front on, with the largest surface area to create the robotic face. Also has even lighting and the most robotic body language (completely straight on and still with straight face) to achieve the robotic persona I desired.