Context & Process
I decided to create an "ugly filter" to be the antithesis of traditional “beauty” filters This filter distorts users' faces to reflect conventionally unattractive features, then prompts the question, 'Do you feel worth less?' The aim is to encourage users to reconsider biases around beauty and whether being 'ugly' should diminish their worth.
To explore this idea, I began by asking ChatGPT what it considered beautiful.
I then began prompting DALL-E
“generate a beautiful woman”
“generate a woman”
The disparity between being told “beauty is subjective” and the images that were generated was staggering. All these women looked eerily similar even when there were variations of skin tones or attempts at diversity. This kind of echoes the hollow “everyone is beautiful” message we hear in the real world. The truth is beauty is inherently exclusionary.
This project aims to challenge the societal preference for physical beauty, In this world, beauty is not only a social currency but is also seen as a virtuous trait. (Hamersmash, 2011). With the increasing influence of AI on platforms like social media, affecting who is pushed to the forefront (Crawford, 2021 ) it aims to emphasize the urgent need to challenge the institution of beauty.
A janky chrome halo , built in Blender sits above each distorted face, a direct reference to the halo effect and the conflation of beauty with virtue.
Reading List
- Crawford, K. (2021) TikTok’s ‘beautiful’ algorithm, Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/encode-justice/tiktoks-beautiful-algorithm-d1fdb6d6c4be (Accessed: 3 January 2024).
- Hamermesh, D.S. and Hamermesh, D.S. (2011) Beauty pays: Why attractive people are more successful. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.
- Matsangidou, M. and Otterbacher, J. (2019) ‘What is beautiful continues to be good’, Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2019, pp. 243–264. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-29390-1_14.
- We Need To Talk About Pretty Privilege (2023). YouTube. 25 July. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI3mwVhoh1A&ab_channel=TheFinancialDiet (Accessed: 10 January 2024).