An art exhibition exploring the impact of facial recognition technology has opened in China, offering a rare public space for reflection on increasingly pervasive surveillance by tech companies and the government.
Hosted jointly by the southern mainland city of Shenzhen and its neighbor Hong Kong, the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture features more than 60 installations from Chinese and foreign artists exploring the loss of urban anonymity brought about by technological change.
The “Eyes of the City” exhibition is being held at Shenzhen’s Futian station, the first mainland stop on a high-speed rail link that opened last year amid apprehension in Hong Kong about its deepening integration with mainland China.
Photo: Reuters
“Stations have traditionally been a place of anonymity, but they’re becoming places where actually everything is known,” said the show’s chief curator, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Carlo Ratti.
“This is one of the things we want to discuss,” he said.
The exhibition comes at a sensitive time in China.
Protests against China’s influence have rocked the former British colony of Hong Kong for months and the rapid spread of facial recognition technology has triggered debate about privacy.
The New York Times last month reported that a Beijing arts center canceled Chinese-American artist Hung Liu’s (劉虹) show of antiwar paintings for no clear reason, though she believed it was related to Hong Kong.
Asked if he was surprised the exhibition had been allowed to open given the unrest in Hong Kong, Ratti said he “found an openness for discussion” in Shenzhen.
“There’s probably not a better place to discuss these issues ... this is a global issue and the best way to deal with it is to open up these technologies and put them in the hands of the public,” he said.
Reuters was unable to contact the event’s organizers and foreign media were not invited to an opening news conference amid concern they would ask about Hong Kong, people with knowledge of the matter said.
The exhibition features a facial recognition system that visitors can opt out of, to draw attention to the inability to opt out in public, Ratti said.
Other works include facial monitors that track visitors’ emotional engagement with the exhibits and digitalized images of fishing boats in one of Shenzhen’s older harbors using advanced Lidar technology by artists Ai Deng and Li Lipeng.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
SKEPTICAL: Given the challenges, which include waste disposal and potential domestic opposition, experts warn that the 2032 nuclear timeline is overambitious Indonesia is hoping going nuclear can help it meet soaring energy demand while taming emissions, but faces serious challenges to its goal of a first small modular reactor by 2032. Its first experiment with nuclear energy dates to February 1965, when then-Indonesian president Sukarno inaugurated a test reactor. Sixty years later, Southeast Asia’s largest economy has three research reactors, but no nuclear power plants for electricity. Abundant reserves of polluting coal have so far met the enormous archipelago’s energy needs, but “nuclear will be necessary to constrain the rise of and eventually reduce emissions,” said Philip Andrews-Speed, a senior research fellow at the
RSS