Biometric citizens: Adapting our selfies to machine vision

Abstract

Machines are an important audience for any selfie today. This chapter discusses how our selfies are treated as data rather than as human communication. Rettberg looks at how facial recognition algorithms analyse our selfies for surveillance, authentication of identity and better-customised commercial services, and relates this to understandings of machine vision as post-optical and non-representational. Through examples ranging from Erica Scourti's video art to Snapchat's selfie lenses, the chapter explores how our expectation of machine vision affects the selfies we take, and how it may be locking down our identity as biometric citizens.