The series of photos
Capture is composed of French police officers’ faces. Paolo Cirio collected 1000 public images of police in photos taken during protests in France and processed them with Facial Recognition software. Cirio then created an online platform with a database of the resulting 4000 faces of police officers to crowdsource their identification by name. Moreover, Cirio printed the officers’ headshots as street art posters and posted them throughout Paris to expose them also in the public space.
Capture commented on the potential uses and misuses of Facial Recognition and Artificial Intelligence by questioning the asymmetry of power at play. The lack of privacy regulations of such technology eventually turned against the same authorities that urge the use of it. This provocation triggered the reactions of the Interior Minister of France and the police unions which forced censorship of the artwork, despite it being celebrated by the French citizens and the international press. Initially, as an activist, Cirio introduced a campaign to ban Facial Recognition technology in all of Europe. In 2021 for his campaign
#BanFacialRecognitionEU, Paolo Cirio delivered a package to various European institutions containing a legal complaint with his research and petition with over 50000 signatures supporting a ban on Facial Recognition in Europe. The European Commission replied to Cirio's complaint by acknowledging the need to legally restrict the use of Artificial Intelligence.
Video playlist
Selected shows and presentations history
Panorama 22 exhibition at Le Fresnoy, 2020, (Censored), Tourcoing - France
Cybernetics of the Poor, exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien, 2020, Vienna - Austria
Artissima Unplugged, solo show at GAM Musuem, 2020, Turin - Italy
Plan B, exhibition at NOME Gallery, 2020, Berlin - Germany
