Techniques of Disobedience

In a world increasingly mediated by automated imaging systems, ToD examines the uneasy intersection between human identity and machine perception. The project blends AI-generated portraits from This Person Does Not Exist with slit-scanned live feeds of urban environments—markets, intersections, tourist centres—creating a hybridised visual language that probes the biases of surveillance technologies.

By manually distorting these AI faces with lenticular lenses, the project speculates on how we might reclaim visibility through acts of disobedience: masks and filters that confuse, rather than conform to, machine recognition. The resulting compositions are fractured and pixelated, mirroring the fragmented ways we now navigate urban spaces shaped by algorithms.

The work challenges the myth of surveillance neutrality, spotlighting the hidden biases embedded in these systems and their quiet authority over public and private spaces. The project positions urban landscapes as speculative battlegrounds for resistance, encouraging viewers to question the power dynamics at play in the technologies that govern our lives.

In this age of ubiquitous surveillance, the project suggests alternative strategies for reclaiming visibility, offering a poetic yet critical lens on how algorithms reshape not only urban spaces but also the ways we see—and are seen—in them.