The Normalizing Machine

‘The Normalizing Machine’ is an interactive installation presented as an experimental research in machine learning. It aims to identify and analyse the image of social normalcy. Each participant is asked to point out who looks most normal from a line up of previously recorded participants. The machine analyses the participant’s decisions and adds them to its aggregated algorithmic image of normalcy.

In the late 1800s the French forensics pioneer Alphonse Bertillon, the father of the mugshot, developed “Le Portrait Parle” (the speaking portrait) a system for standardising, indexing and classifying the human face. His statistical system was never meant to criminalise the face but it was later widely adopted by both the Eugenics movement and by the Nazis to do exactly that.

The work automates Bertillon’s speaking portraits and visualises how today’s systematic discrimination is aggregated, amplified and conveniently hidden behind the seemingly objective black box of Artificial Intelligence.

Title: The Normalizing Machine

Medium: Interactive installation

Artists: Mushon Zer-Aviv, Dan Stavy and Eran Weissenstern

Year: 2018

Location: On display at Pedion tou Areos

Glossary: machine learning, algorithm, algorithmic prejudice, artificial intelligence