Discover how Ed used an abstract portrait drawing project to help his International Baccalaureate students understand how facial recognition worked as they explored ideas about safety, privacy, and identity.
First, Ed’s students took self-portraits using Camera app on iPad. Then they used shapes in Keynote to dot key areas of the face. Learn about taking portrait photos in Chapter 2 of the Everyone Can Create Photo guide.
Next, they connected the dots to create a facial map.
Then they traced photos of their faces to create abstract portraits of themselves. Learn how to create a drawing from a photo in Chapter 5 of the Everyone Can Create Drawing guide.
With their photographic identities now concealed, students learned how facial recognition algorithms could, in fact, process the same face differently. This raised questions about the accuracy of facial recognition technology and the acceptable margins of error.
When Ed had his students measure the angles and lengths between the facial data points, students learned that they could create more prescriptive facial maps to increase the precision of facial recognition algorithms.
With a better understanding of how facial recognition technology worked, students were shown it could be subverted with an example from Ewa Nowak’s Incognito art piece. This created an even more robust discussion about how the technology could be used and abused in areas such as public surveillance, border control, and criminal identification.
By exploring Computer Science through Art, learning becomes accessible for both the technologically savvy student and the artistically inclined one. This allows all learners to build a deeper understanding and develop new perspectives.