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Nonfacial Portrait review: art fights to save faces and paint over AI

Artists play cat and mouse with face-recognition software at a South Korean exhibition in the battle to retain a division between humanity and machines

By Douglas Heaven

14 November 2018

AI drawn faces

New AI makes it hard to paint a face only humans recognise as such

Shinseungback Kimyonghun

Nonfacial Portrait, Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Seoul Museum of Art, South Korea, to 18 November. Keep an eye on Culture for future showings

NINE portraits hang on a wall. The mouths and eyes have been scrubbed out, the faces painted over or dissected with thick smears of colour until the sitter sinks out of sight. This is resistance art: the revolution will not be recognised.

Nonfacial Portrait is an installation by South Korean artists Shin Seung Back and Kim Yong Hun. Commissioned for the…

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