Deepfaker
Deepfakes, videos that have been modified to map the movements of one face onto another, present a new challenge for modern civil society. Typically targeting high-profile social and political leaders, they force us to grapple with the validity of the media we consume on a daily basis. There's something fundamentally unsettling about videos depicting a person doing or saying things they didn't actually do or say.
The increasing prevalence and proliferation of deepfake videos will fundamentally change both global democracy and our collective perception of reality, leaving us with questions: What happens to our sense of agency when our face becomes someone else's puppet? What happens to reality when we can no longer trust what we see? What are the implications of a world devoid of digital truth?
Deepfaker explores these questions, but more specifically, it explores the erasure of agency that occurs when a user's face is hijacked. By being asked to, in front of a camera, move in ways conducive to processes used by deepfake algorithms, the user experiences some of how it feels to have a piece of their identity stolen.