Portrait

ACT-based artist Dahl presents a series of digital prints raising questions about the links between facial expression recognition (FER) technologies and traditions that understand photographic portraits as windows to a subject’s soul.

FER is a rapidly developing algorithmic technology that aims to measure variations in facial expression to detect emotional states and predict behaviour. The software is now becoming integrated into marketing, retail, educational and security surveillance systems.

Dahl focuses on the ‘deadpan’, exploring the idea of the neutral expression as perhaps a form of resistance to data collection, a loss of human agency in emotional life or a space for the viewer to find their own meaning in a portrait.