Here is some more 3D printed art that I can get into! Not because of the political commentary at work, so much as the Philip K. Dickian psychosis that it induces. Artist Leonardo Selvaggio has created a 3D printed mask of his own face as a method for avoiding facial recognition surveillance technology. He calls it URME (get it?) and, in order to manufacture and sell his masks at cost, Selvaggio has go-goed to Indiegogo.
Selvaggio resides in Chicago, which he says is “the most widely surveilled city” in the United States. The artist believes that, in order to bypass these devices, supposedly powered by facial recognition technology, one must either wear a conspicuous ski mask or destroy them. His creative solution is to wear a somewhat less obvious, but symbolically powerful, mask of his own face.
The artist hopes to produce a variety of methods for avoiding facial recognition software at different levels. As part of his campaign, he is selling, for $10, a paper mask of his own face. The mask can also be purchased as
a kit of 12 or 24 towards their true end, mass demonstrations or protests in which all participants wear Selvaggio’s face to avoid being tracked by authorities.
For $25, backers can purchase a piece of video software that places the artist’s face over those of up to five people. This is for Anonymous-style videos or voicing one’s own concerns about the surveillance state anonymously.
The actual 3D printed prosthetic is a hefty $400. The video encryption, paper masks and 3D printed mask have, according to the Indiegogo page, “been tested for facial recognition and each properly identifies the wearer of me on facebook, which has some of the most sophisticated facial recognition software around.” This, of course, doesn’t address the problem of displaying your IP address when posting videos of yourself as Selvaggio, but there are other ways around that.
URME is actually part of a larger art installation, aside from a symbolic installation into all public spaces. Selvaggio will be debuting URME in its various forms at the Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College in Chicago on May 16. If you can’t make it to the event, the artist also encourages people to participate in the event by sending a video of yourself speaking your mind about mass surveillance to [email protected]. Don’t worry about having your identity revealed, though, because, you guessed it, Selvaggio will be encrypting your face with his own.
It’s difficult not to consider the narcissism disguised as martyrdom at work in the project. I might be jaded, but I can’t help but sense a little self-centeredness in URME, particularly when I think of the $100 leftover after the $300 masks are 3D printed by That’s My Face. Or when I wonder why the artist doesn’t just give away the files to print the paper versions of his mask for free. 
Update: The artist has let me know that the Indiegogo price for the signed prosthetic of $400 includes the excess $100 donation as an act of charity. When the masks are sold through his site, they will be sold at cost: “The URME prosthetic will actually be sold for $200 which is $100 dollars less than the standard price at Thatsmyface.com. I have been really fortunate that they have been willing to lower their price for my audience. The perk on indiegogo is available for a $400 donation or more. It also will be signed by me the artist, which the other masks will not be.”
Then again, all humans are selfish, an inherent part of having a self and that may end up being a part of Selvaggio’s commentary. And, at the same time that Selvaggio introduces us to his selfishness, he separates us from our own because, by putting on the mask of another, we can’t help but empathize with him. In the process of trading faces with the artist, we also become aware that the face itself, the most recognizable part of a person’s identity is actually a piece of artifice, a mask. And, beneath that mask, that ego, we’re all really one. The Beatles said it best (translated into Selvaggio’s parlance): IMHE as URHE as URME and WERALL2GETHER.
So, while the artist may be making an interesting statement about the current dystopian world living under constant surveillance by our own governments (and each other), he is also reflecting on a deeper, more fundamental truth about life as a whole: I am the eggman. They are the eggmen. I am the walrus. Goo goo goo joob.
