Help me Know the Truth

Mary Flanagan

23 April 2016

Interactive software

Help me Know the Truth is a participatory artwork in which visitors to exhibition become a part of the work across the gallery. Participants first snap a digital portrait at a small photo booth at the entrance to the show. In the gallery, they can choose between two slightly altered portraits to match the text label shown on the screen. By selecting the slight variations of the images over time, differing facial features emerge that reveal larger unconscious beliefs about facial features or tendencies related to culture and identity.

The intent behind the work is to both utilize and question how computational techniques can uncover the categorizing systems of the mind, and how they are therefore subject to socially constructed fears and values. The work further calls into question notions of truth.

Is neuroscience truly the best way to parse the complex interplay of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs of a person?

Courtesy: Mary Flanagan

Acknowledgements: Jared Segal