Exposed by the Mask

Semantic segmentation is the process of assigning a label – vehicle, person, sidewalk, pavement etc. -- to every pixel in an image. This artificial intelligence technology was initially created for military application, Gulf War, and it is the core technology behind autonomous driving, medical imaging technologies or satellite image processing, among others. Being from Brazil, the departure point of the project is to explore my own relation to Dakar, Senegal, through the inscriptions of colonialism and post-colonialism in the leisure industry. Before visiting Dakar in the fall of 2019 for an art residency, my relationship with it was basically mediated through a game, called “Paris-Dakar 1990”, for the video-game console Atari. This game was made as a merchandise product from the Paris Dakar race. Through juxtaposition between this ‘AI’ technology and those video game ‘vignettes’ the work is a reflection of how new technologies and engineering projects promise a revolutionary new future while replicating and reinforcing old forms of racialized, gendered and class ideas about the ‘good life’ through middle class ideology.