Identikit
Moving Image
In 2019 I generated 200 artificial images of faces, and have been feeding them through a process of iterative manipulation. Over this time it has been warped into increasingly mangled forms through various processes. I animate the images together, and use optical flow motion estimation to fill in gaps between the frames. Optical flow refers to patterns of motion in a visual scene. I further manipulate this footage by exploiting the way digital video is compressed. To save storage space, many of the frames in a video contain only the instructions on which pixels differ from the previous frame and which direction they move. By removing or duplicating these compressed frames, I stretch and shrink facial movements or apply the movement from one length of film onto another. The film is attempts to explore the recesses of the uncanny valley and alludes to facial detection software, artificial intelligence and the emergence of the deepfake.
