[csaa-forum] Darwin’s Animoji: Histories of Animation and Racism in Facial Recognition - Thurs. 10 Oct. Media at Sydney

[Justine Humphry]

*Media at Sydney Seminar*

*Darwin’s Animoji: Histories of Animation and Racism in Facial Recognition *

*– Luke Stark, Microsoft Research*

Facial recognition systems are increasingly common components of smartphones
and other consumer digital devices. These technologies enable animated
video- sharing applications, such as Apple’s animoji and memoji, Facebook
Messenger’s masks and filters and Samsung’s AR Emoji. Such animations serve
as technical phenomena translating moments of affective and emotional
expression into mediated, trackable, and socially legible forms across a
variety of social media platforms.

Through technical and historical analysis of these digital artifacts, the
talk will explore the ways facial recognition systems classify and
categorize racial identities in human faces in relation to emotional
expression. Drawing on the longer history of discredited pseudosciences
such as phrenology, the paper considers the dangers of both racializing
logics as part of these systems of classification, and of how social media
data regarding emotional expression gathered through these systems can be
used to reinforce systems of oppression and discrimination.

*Luke Stark *is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Fairness, Accountability,
Transparency and Ethics (FATE) Group at Microsoft Research Montreal. His
scholarship examines the history and contemporary societal impacts of AI
and other digital media facilitating for social and emotional interaction.
His work has been published in venues including Social Studies of Science,
Media Culture and Society, History of the Human Sciences, and The
International Journal of Communication. He has previously been a
Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Dartmouth College, a
Fellow and Affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at
Harvard University, and an inaugural Fellow with the University of
California Berkeley’s Center for Technology, Society, and Policy. He holds
a PhD from the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York
University, and an Honours BA and MA in History from the University of
Toronto.

*When:*

Thursday, 10 October 2019

3.00pm – 4.30pm

*Where*

New Law School Annexe SR 440, University of Sydney

Near cnr Russell Place and Manning Road

Sydney, NSW 2006


*Register at Eventbrite*

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/animation-and-racism-in-facial-recognition-luke-stark-microsoft-research-tickets-72762475523

*More information *

slam.events at sydney.edu.au
 [Apologies for any cross-posting]
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