Makeup has long been used as an art form to make political statements, but can it also be used to thwart police surveillance technology?
In light of the ongoing protests against ICE raids, social media users across YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter have been sharing makeup tutorials designed with the intention of camouflaging protesters against facial recognition technology.
Known as Computer Vision Dazzle, or CV Dazzle, this abstract style of makeup was created by artist and researcher Adam Harvey for his 2010 master's thesis at NYU. While traditional camo is designed as a disruptive pattern meant to hide the wearer from the human eye, CV Dazzle was created to break machine vision systems. The name comes from “Dazzle,” a type of camouflage on battleships in WWI and WWII that used complex patterns of contrasting geometric shapes to make it difficult for enemies to determine their speed and distance. (It is worth noting that Dazzle camouflage offered mixed results at best.)
Since its invention, CV Dazzle has been utilized in various protest movements. During the 2020 George Floyd protests, a popular hashtag was shared on social media to foil facial recognition software used by law enforcement. The London-based collective known as The Dazzle Club also utilized anti-surveillance makeup between 2019 and 2021 to protest the city’s widespread use of surveillance cameras.