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Massive Attack turns concert into facial recognition surveillance experiment
- lawlessone 1y agoRollercoaster headline
- jkingsman 1y agoFeels like this title could benefit from clarification that 'Massive Attack' refers to the band and not the concept of a large scale attack; perhaps "Band 'Massive Attack' Turns Concert into Facial Recognition Surveillance Experiment"
- IOUnix 1y agoHahah, great point. As a music nut I knew what it was talking about, but to people who don't it might seem alarming.
- JimDabell 1y agoThis reminds me of the time I bought a physical copy of O’Reilly’s Python Cookbook from a bookshop and wondered why everybody was giving me strange looks.
- antonymoose 1y agoI unironically thought this was going to be about a recent terrorist attack on a concert.
- pinkmuffinere 1y agoYa same, I thought they had footage during an attack, and now had to do facial recognition to determine the perpetrators or victims
- hulitu 1y ago> I unironically thought this was going to be about a recent terrorist attack on a concert. Nothing personal, but you do seem to have a nice education. US ?
- ricardonunez 1y ago“Turns concert” clarified it to me.
- bruffen 1y agoMy next stop was going to be LiveLeak to see the aftermath.
- pineaux 1y agoLiveleak is no more my good old friend
- add-sub-mul-div 1y agoWhy suggest that headlines should have enough detail to prevent people from reading the article and gaining a fuller understanding of the material? The problem isn't that headlines don't have enough details, it's that people want to or already do treat them like the full story and never have to learn anything nuanced therein.
- andrewflnr 1y agoThe purpose of a headline, at least in an ideal world, is to tell you whether the article's topic is relevant to your interests. That's all that's being asked for here. Being able to properly parse the headline is a good start.
- hulitu 1y ago> Being able to properly parse the headline is a good start. The headline is perfectly parseable, unless most of the headlines on HN or BBC. The fact that it says "Band concert" shall be selfexplanatory.
- andrewflnr 1y agoIf it did say "band concert", that would still be grammatically dubious but would still indeed be more self explanatory. But it literally doesn't say that.
- layer8 1y agoThe casing sort-of disambiguates it.
- cornichon622 1y agoThe casing was changed, before almost every word had an uppercase. I'll never understand that trend!
- tempodox 1y agoIt’s called title case. Although this example shows that not title-casing it can carry additional information.
- treetalker 1y agoJust as in Wayne's World, where the band being referred to was The Shitty Beetles, "It's not just a clever name!"
- andrewflnr 1y agoMy read was "cyber attack". I had to do some backtracking and context lookups to get the right parse.
- jameslk 1y agoAnyone who’s seen The Matrix has been exposed to Massive Attack in one of the most famous scenes from the movie: https://youtu.be/6IDT3MpSCKI https://youtu.be/6IDT3MpSCKI In fact, I recall many songs from The Matrix being played nonstop back in my teenage gamer IRC days. Maybe even by others than just me
- bmitc 1y agoAs a note, that version is a pre-release version that was used in the movie before the album released. The album version is different.
- zeristor 1y agoOr indeed the TV series House, albeit in the US.
- AndrewOMartin 1y agoSome people in Europe have Televisions, too.
- 0312831209381 1y agoThe show 'House' has used three different opening tracks depending on territory and medium. Massive Attack's Teardrop was used in the original US air (although as a Brit I've somehow heard all three on tv re-runs and Amazon Prime)
- tempodox 1y agoMy Massive Attack is a bit rusty. What song is that?
- jameslk 1y agoDissolved Girl from the album Mezzanine, though as another commenter mentioned elsewhere, a different version of the track is used in the film
- navane 1y agoThat's what the capitalization of attack is doing.
- tptacek 1y agoNeat and all, but I'd be even happier if they flirted with the experiment of actually touring a new album, rather than serving as trip-hop's answer to Roger Waters, touring forever on the same 12 songs.
- bigiain 1y agoWhile I agree, in that I'd love a new album. God damn those are 12 great songs!
- tptacek 1y agoI'd say the same thing but I saw them on the Mezzanine nostalgia tour in Chicago, which was very expensive, and it was... not one of the best shows I've seen. I'd seen them a couple times prior and they were fine (I was both times surprised by the guest vocalists they'd managed to drag along on those tours). The Mezzanine tour though was like Spinal Tap's appearance on the Simpsons; "there will be no encore!".
- wisemang 1y agoI thoroughly enjoyed their Toronto show on that tour. To be fair it was the first time I’d seen them in concert so I didn’t have any points of comparison. I also hadn’t really clued in to just how political they were until seeing their visuals, which I also thought added a lot. Surely not everyone’s cup of tea though.
- Loughla 1y agoYou watch your dirty mouth. They're amazing and you know it. But yes. They do need new material dammit.
- alexey-salmin 1y ago[Not the OP] Massive Attack is (was?) amazing but their live shows aren't. I attended one in Paris this year. Not only it was exactly the same show as few years ago including the decorations and the scrolling text wall but the sound was horrible. I couldn't hear anything. I would be better off if I just stayed home and listened to the recording.
- maplethorpe 1y agoA few sentences in, I was thinking that the article felt AI-generated, so I scrolled to the bottom of the page. There's no author listed, but there is this disclaimer: "AI assists in refining our editorial process, ensuring that every article is engaging, clear and succinct." One thing I hope we'll see in the future on these types of articles is the ability to view the original prompt. If your goal is to be succinct, you can't get much more succinct than that.
- ortusdux 1y agoJust have an AI summarize it for you /s https://marketoonist.com/2023/03/ai-written-ai-read.html https://marketoonist.com/2023/03/ai-written-ai-read.html
- elpakal 1y agoor move the disclaimer to the top. or better yet, have aggregators like HN add a badge if it's likely AI generated
- jedberg 1y ago> or better yet, have aggregators like HN add a badge if it's likely AI generated How could you possibly tell? I've been playing around with AI detectors, putting in known all-human samples, known all-AI samples, and mixed samples. The only thing it's gotten right is not marking a human sample as 100% AI (but it marked one of the AI samples as 100% human). Having such a mark would be a witch-hunt for sure.
- sarreph 1y agoThe (presumably fully human) author is listed in the byline at the top of the article. What is sadly rather ironic is the author's first name, "Al" looks like AI when stylised in the article's font.
- hooskerdu 1y agoCould be a clever nom de plume?
- ajcp 1y agoJust wait until Coldplay gets ahold of this tech.
- thw_9a83c 1y ago> The band deployed live facial recognition technology that captured and analyzed attendees during their recent performance. I think more drama has been created around this than is necessary. Based on the video, the real-time projected visitor's faces were not analyzed. They were simply shown with a random description flag attached, such as "energetic," "compassionate," "inspiring," "fitness influencer," or "cloud watcher." It seems to be an artistic provocation showing what a real people analysis could look like.
- stevage 1y agoOh so it isn't even recognition, in that it doesn't identify the people. Just face detection.
- jkestner 1y agoThe fact that people were uncomfortable with simply having their pictures taken and shown without their knowledge gives lie to the idea that "You're in a public place—of course you have no right to privacy." It's great to be given the chance to face your principles.
- insickness 1y agoPublic photography is not a crime, nor should it be. However, that doesn't mean your likeness can be used for just any purpose.
- jolmg 1y ago> Public photography is not a crime, nor should it be. IDK about shouldn't. Public photography not being a crime comes from a time where one could still be generally expected to remain anonymous despite being photographed. Just like how you can be seen by strangers in the street while walking and still remain anonymous. Yet stalking is a crime, and facial recognition seems to be the digital equivalent. Facial recognition is something that can be done at any point by someone with your picture in their hand.
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- stevage 1y agoNot having a clear consent statement or saying what they are doing with the data seems the correct artistic choice.
- ares623 1y agoNow that’s what I call art. It’s hard to explain the concept of surveillance and its effects to laypeople. And the corporations absolutely know that.
- hamdingers 1y agoFrom the video this appears to be face detection, with some cute strings attached at random to the detected faces. I don't see evidence of facial recognition.
- MyOutfitIsVague 1y agoIt displays the faces on the screen, and you recognize them.
- pier25 1y agohow did the code crop faces without facial recognition?
- Gigachad 1y agoParent comment is saying the system wasn’t linking the faces to real names, just detecting a face in general.
- Eisenstein 1y ago'Face detection' means it can detect faces. 'Face recognition' means it recognizes the faces. A specific example of the difference: license plate detection will detect the presence of a license plate; license plate recognition will tell you the number on that plate.
- dotancohen 1y agoIt was detecting faces, not recognizing them. Recognition implies associating the faces with an ID.
- pcl 1y agoIn the industry, that’s known as face (or facial) detection, which is a different problem than face recognition. Face recognition means computing which individual from some other database of people a particular face belongs to. There’s also face tracking — detecting a face in an image and then tracking the same face across subsequent images. Which is often implemented by using a face recognition approach, but without any predefined catalog of people — you just dynamically fill up your face database as faces appear in the image sequence / video source.
- ycwatcher 1y agoThey have long been sounding the alarm to society through their art. As a longtime fan, I’m glad to see them being recognized in this way once again.
- Lerc 1y agoThe YouTube video is a year old, and says the labels are fake. Have they done this again with an updated system?
- mkw5053 1y agoHas it ever been confirmed if Robert Del Naja is Bansky?
- tjpnz 1y agoIt's not him but probably was attending some of their gigs.
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- zephod 1y agoThis lends even more weight to the theory that Massive Attack’s singer is, in fact, Banksy.
- 0xbadcafebee 1y agoI tried to create an art piece sorta like this once. Video cameras in two separate places in the world, hooked up to a monitor. Made to look like a mirror, only you realize you're looking into a completely different place. So if you and someone else walk up to it, it's like you in another dimension. I was told I couldn't bring it to a regional burning man event because "it violates consent" (because they didn't consent to being filmed). Despite their being no storage or recording whatsoever and it only being a live feed to another identical event. The organizers just couldn't come to grips with the discomfort they felt that there are cameras capturing your image. We definitely need more of these projects so people don't keep their heads in the sand.
- POiNTx 1y agoThat's a really cool concept, I'd love to see more art like this that uses modern technology. Do you have a demo available somewhere to see what the effect would look like? This is one of those things where you should just do it without asking for permission. The portals[0] art installation in some cities doesn't ask for consent either. [0] https://www.portals.org/ https://www.portals.org/
- tonyarkles 1y agoThat’s really unfortunate. Having been to a regional burn before, the fact that there was no storage or recording, to me, seems to really fit the ethos: this video feed is completely ephemeral; after a frame has been displayed it has been lost forever. I do, however, also appreciate how strict the community seems to be about recording without consent. Some people go to burns to be able to completely disconnect from their usual lives without fear that there will be any reprisal for legal/maybe-illegal-but-harmless activities they might do there, and the potential of being recorded can put a serious damper on that feeling of freedom.
- 0xbadcafebee 1y agoBut the thing is, the burning man principles give you everything you need to deal with scenarios like this. The burn is not supposed to be a vacation, and definitely not a place to completely disconnect. It's supposed to challenge you. And you're supposed to rise to meet that challenge, with radical inclusion, self-reliance, participation, immediacy. If you're afraid of cameras, wear a giant clown mask. If you want to feel freedom, walk into deep playa and close your eyes and ears. The burn doesn't care what you came there to take; it gives you what you need. (but I'm starting to realize that regionals have a bit less freedom)
- llm_nerd 1y agoAre the faces even of audience members? Seems...gimmicky. The faces don't seem to react at all, and all are making almost AI movements. Many look artificial. And it isn't identifying the people or anything. It's putting some meaningless adjective like "Resourceful" below them. Have seen this headline a few times and thought it was actually novel and demonstrative of some face database or something, but instead it's just a surveillance gimmick. Put a bunch of generative AI face loops with bounding boxes and adjectives.
- arshadomari 1y agoThis just looks like straight face detection and projection with a random word. How is this recognition?
- sambeau 1y agoThis is face detection, not recognition. Face recognition would have a correct name underneath each face.
- hollow-moe 1y agogenerated seo slop, doesn't have its place on hn https://musicminds.com/massive-attack-turns-facial-recognition-into-performance-art https://musicminds.com/massive-attack-turns-facial-recogniti...
- tonymet 1y agoThink about the most notorious authoritarian regimes. Third Reich, GDR , USSR, Mao's China. They had relatively weak surveillance capacity. Secret police had to personally spy on the target and manually install bugs/taps. Technology was primitive and error prone. Most casual conversations were less vulnerable to spying. Rural people were relatively safe. Private conversations could be easily held in secret (e.g. walk outside, play a record). Also consider resourcing, the manpower, money, tools, electricity devoted to surveillance back then compared to today How about today? Where could you venture in secret without being tracked? How could you hold a private conversation? Your face & license plates are constantly tracked, along with your personal phone, laptop , watch, fitness tracker, Tire Pressure Management Systems, etc. If you had to assign a logarithmic authoritarian intensity scale to those regimes, and to today's regimes, how would you rank them? Consider the spying capacity, resources, recording capacity, analytic capacity. I would put today's regimes many orders of magnitude more severe. what do you think?
- Mountain_Skies 1y agoYes, though on the flip side, that power is very fragile now, relying on complex, difficult to maintain technology, with high overhead costs (aggregate, not individual). They can also more easily be turned against their creators or those who believe they have firm control but don't.
- kmoser 1y agoThat power is actually less fragile than ever, given there are for-profit entities ensuring their continued existence. The State doesn't need to deploy mass surveillance tools when they're built and maintained by private industry. Regular payments and court orders ensure the State has ready access to any of the data they might want.
- tonymet 1y agoI lean toward this side . It’s harder to know friend vs enemy because everyone is engaged and employed to spy on you. My doctor requires privacy disclosures to share my diagnostics and genome results – none of the admins know how to allow me to decline. So now I have to choose between important care and – risk of employment and insurability . Also the martial forces (police , military, security ) are more directly managed , and more broadly deployed . You can no longer reason with an individual because their decisions have to be run up the chain . Individuals no longer have authority to provide exceptions or help
- evanjrowley 1y agoHow did so many people hold back the urge to make funny faces when the facial recognition was being shown?
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- chews 1y agoBanksy does it again.
- BrenBarn 1y agoIndeed, what is the surveillance state/economy but a "massive attack" against us all?
- jmward01 1y agoThe big difference between this and all the other facial recognition happening is that people knew it happened. Walk into a fast food chain and take a look at all those cameras. Do you really think they aren't harvesting every possible insight from them? I can only guess what McDonald's could glean from recognizing every face and tracking time/place/order/how long you look at the menu and which items, etc etc. I don't know that that is going on but in the US with how little we have in privacy protections I must assume that they do everything I just thought of and way more. We need more people exposing what is allowed by law and pointing it out in big obvious ways, only with a banner below saying "We tell you this is happening. Corporations don't"
- _trampeltier 1y agoAlready some years ago, when I bought a ticket for Cirque de Soleil, in the fine print was already then, they could use and sell your face for AI training data.
- egorfine 1y ago> Details about data storage and participant consent remain unclear And that's part of the performance. You don't get to choose what companies do with your personal data.
- m_st 1y agoMicrosoft made something similar, years ago, at the presentation of their azure cognitive services. A camera randomly picked a live face from the audience, passed it through azure cognitive services and displayed the mood of the person in a video overlay.