Dennis Delgado is a contemporary American artist and critic who examines how ideologies of colonialism persist and re-inscribe themselves within modern technology such as in facial recognition systems which fail to properly identify people of color. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States including the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, UC Irvine, University of Texas at Austin, Palo Alto Art Center, El Museo del Barrio, and at the Cooper Union. He currently serves as an assistant professor in information technology at Baruch College.[1][2]
Dennis Delgado | |
|---|---|
| Born | South Bronx, New York, U.S. |
| Alma mater | University of Rochester City College of New York |
| Website | www |
Work
editThe Dark Database series
edit| External videos | |
|---|---|
 The Sara Little Turnbull Visiting Designer Speaker Series, Dennis Delgado, Lehman College Art Gallery via YouTube |
The Dark Database series looks at the bias inherent in facial recognition systems.[3][4]
Selected group exhibitions
edit- 2021 The Black Index (online only due to COVID-19 restrictions), University of California, Irvine (CAC Gallery), Irvine, California (January 14-March 20, 2021) with Alicia Henry, Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, Titus Kaphar, Whitfield Lovell, and Lava Thomas.[2]
- 2022 Painting As Is II, Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, New York (June 28-August 26, 2022) with various artists including Robert Bordo, Martha Diamond, Rochelle Feinstein, James Hyde, Caroline Kent, Elizabeth McIntosh, Oren Pinhassi, Nathlie Provosty, Craig Taylor, and Dan Walsh[5]
- 2024 Spiritual Machines, Flux Factory Inc., Queens, New York (August 17-September 22, 2024) with various visual and performing artists including Ursula Endlicher.[6]
References
edit- ^ "Faculty Profile". Baruch College. Retrieved 2 October 2024.
Dennis Delgado was born in the South Bronx, and received a BA in Film Studies from the University of Rochester as well as an MFA in Sculpture from the City College of New York (CUNY). His work examines the forms through which ideologies of colonialism persist and re-inscribe themselves, revealing a historical presence in the current moment. He is interested in how technologies of vision reproduce the scopic regimes of expansionism and neo-liberal governance. His work has been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, UC Irvine, UT Austin, Palo Alto Center for the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, and at the Cooper Union.
- ^ a b "The Black Index". University of California, Irvine. Retrieved 2 October 2024.
The artists featured in The Black Index—Dennis Delgado, Alicia Henry, Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, Titus Kaphar, Whitfield Lovell, and Lava Thomas—build upon the tradition of Black self-representation as an antidote to colonialist images.
- ^ "The Dark Database". Dennis Delgado. Retrieved 2 October 2024.
The Dark Database series looks at the bias inherent in facial recognition systems. Using Open Computer Vision and the programming language Python, a facial detection algorithm was run on a series of films by directors of color. Each of the faces detected was stacked and centered according to a portrait template. The median pixel value for each detected face is calculated to create one single portrait of the film that serves as a kind of record of all the faces the facial detection algorithm was able to detect. Current studies show that facial recognition systems are less able to detect a face in an image when the skin tone of that face is not Caucasian. The undetected faces are then not enrolled in the systems' database. As a result many of the systems are trained using datasets which contain fewer people of color, making those same systems inaccurate when recognizing or identifying individuals of color. The Dark Database is a kind of record of visibility and representation as seen through the eyes of artificial intelligence.
- ^ Delgado, Dennis (Fall 2021). "The Dark Database: Facial Recognition and Its "Failure" to Enroll". University of Illinois. Media-N. Retrieved 2 October 2024 – via University of Illinois.
This essay discusses the Dark Database project, which looks at the presence of blackness in facial recognition systems. It recognizes the system's privileging of Caucasian skin as the central definition of skin tone. The essay considers these flaws within the context of photography's history of shaping how people of color are imagined and represented in visual culture. Moving through the structure of a facial recognition system, the essay describes utilizing that system to create a set of composite portraits that record what a system can "see,"and furthermore, what that process can tell us about the overall culture that produced it.
- ^ "Painting As Is II". Nathalie Karg Gallery. Retrieved 2 October 2024.
Nathalie Karg Gallery is pleased to present Painting as Is II, a group exhibition curated by Heidi Hahn and Tim Wilson. The exhibition runs from June 28 through August 26, 2022 and features work by Lisa Beck, Blinn and Lambert, Robert Bordo, Sarah Braman, Theresa Daddezio, Dennis Delgado, Martha Diamond, Olivia Drusin, Rochelle Feinstein, Jackie Feng, Meena Hasan, James Hyde, Olivia Jia, Marina Kappos, Caroline Kent, Jaena Kwon, Benny Merris, Elizabeth McIntosh, Oren Pinhassi, Nathlie Provosty, Craig Taylor, and Dan Walsh
- ^ "Spiritual Machines". Flux Factory. Retrieved 2 October 2024.
The works respond to our current condition of technological advancement, addressing artificial intelligence, hybrid humans, what is real in an increasingly virtual world, and what cultural practices, rituals, and artifacts we are retaining, revisiting, and evolving along with us.
External links
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