Page 150 - Flaunt 171 - Summer of Our Discontent - Lili

disinformation—orchestrated by the US government and its adversaries alike. Says Rid in the book’s intro- duction: We live in an age of disinformation. Private correspondence gets stolen and leaked to the press for malicious effect; political passions are in-flamed online in order to drive wedges into existing cracks in liberal democracies; perpetrators sow doubt and deny malicious activity in public, while covertly ramping it up behind the scenes.”
In the 1980s, Rid goes on later to describe, atop decades of misinformation campaigns, The Soviet Union spread false information that suggested the United States purposely created AIDS to use as a biological weapon. The infiltration of the messaging and information reached gay rights activists, here and abroad, many of the groups believed it to be true, and to the tune of the KGB’s intent, continued to spread the notion.
As mentioned, disinformation was not only orchestrated by the Soviets. In the 1950s—and of particular interst to those of us in the magazine business—Project LCCASSOCK went underway.
As the Cold War commenced and picked up steam, the CIA conceived of and produced a number of newspapers, magazines and brochures in Ger- many with an intent to “weaken and/or destroy Communist manifestations in the GDR and the Federal Republic.” One of the publications was a jazz magazine named Schlagzeug, which became very popular. The magazine was not “blatantly pro-capitalist” and did little to hurt the Commu- nist manifestations. Instead it humorously became a highly regarded jazz journal enjoyed by many in Germany.
Point being, it has never been beyond “great” governments to purposely misinform the public for some type of political gain or manipulation tac- tic. We’re not unfamiliar with declarations of “fake news” used to discredit legitimate journalism.
And beyond that, instances of deceit in the United States could very well be going unnoticed. We are supposed to be able to trust the government offi- cials elected into office by the people, but a task that should be easy is unbelievably difficult.
IS THAT A CUBIST, INTERSECTIONAL FLUORESCENT PRINT PATTERN ON YOUR FACE, OR ARE YOU JUST HAPPY TO SEE ME?
Written by Eloisa de Farias
So you’re ready for an evening of good old fash- ioned merrymaking, but that fundamental question, perhaps the most important of our time, looms: what to wear? Well, if individualism is important to you— we’d presume as much given the rag you’re reading— then perhaps it’s important you apply some dazzle
to that get-up. No, we’re not talking pink platinum leather culottes or LED embedded 7-inch robo-heels (though both sound great), we’re talking anti-surveil- lance threads and makeup.
The term ‘dazzle’ stems from a style of ship cam- ouflage used extensively by Admiralty in the UK, and later by the US Navy, in World War I, and to a lesser extent in World War II. Dazzle in this case featured complex patterns of geometric shapes in contrasting colors, which interrupted and intersected with each other. Dazzle was not meant to conceal—like other types of camouflage—but rather to mess with an enemy’s estimates of a target’s speed, range, and di- rectional disposition. Dazzle’s overall wartime success is inconclusive, based on numerous factors, but it did arguably influence the Cubist art movement—notably fronted by Pablo Picasso—and today’s anti-surveil- lance fashion.
In fact, anti-surveillance fashion has been on the rise more or less as long as facial technology-powered surveillance itself has. Facial recognition cameras categorize us by gender, race, and age, ultimately lumping us and our personalities into algorithms. So, as a general lack of privacy becomes normalized, so has creating looks that prevent identity monitoring, theft, and manipulation. But what else is this self- styled effort preventing? These avant-garde looks not only arguably deter cameras and technology, but the imperative avoidance of fashion conformity (yuck!).
The most noteworthy method for accomplishing Big Brother deception vis-a-vis fashion is by means of
Computer Vision Dazzle Camouflage, better known as the aforementioned CV Dazzle, championed by Adam Harvey, the featured artist herein. Harvey has been a noteworthy voice in this space for well over a decade, and what’s fascinating about his work is the requisite responsiveness as technology evolves or changes.
Says Harvey on the portraiture pieces herein, which he created in Berlin: “These concept sketch-
es from the CV Dazzle project show procedurally generated face camouflage patterns. Before generating actual facial prosthetics and makeup styles, CV Dazzle uses 3D modeling to test the effectiveness of patterns in simulated environments. The original faces are compared to the camouflage faces to get a similarity score. In this example, the male pattern received a cosine similarity metric of between 0.3 - 0.4 across various poses, while the female pattern received a cosine similarity metric of between 0.2 - 0.3. The minimum score for an automated face recognition system would typically be greater than 0.8. A score
of 0.3 means these two faces are definitely not the same person. While these designs are still not quite practical for everyday use, this simulation system opens new possibilities for fashion designers to create and test new accessories to subvert facial recognition surveillance.”
One activist group that champions the spirit of CV Dazzle is a group called the Dazzle Club, founded by four artists—Emily Roderick, Georgina Rowlands, Anna Hart and Evie Price. The group meets up once a month in London to protest surveillance technology by sporting avant-garde looks painted on their faces. The Dazzle Club is a timely example of how individu- ality, fashion and non-conformity can all intersect in a practical way to combat the invasion of privacy that is increasingly concerning.
Non-conformity is hard, given the mass produc-
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