Take a selfie with Portraits of Perfection (PoP), or gather all your friends to take a lovely group photo! Just hope that everyone is pretty enough or else PoP will refuse to take your picture...
PoP explores how pretty privilege affects us, and the emotions it evokes: how does it feel to be judged by a robot, which are often seen as relatively objective agents compared to humans or other subjective-appearing creatures?
Although similar to judgement as a feature of creatureness, portraits of perfection hones in on the action that follows judgement, as this is a key part of pretty privilege. At the same time, social acceptance is a key part of pretty privilege and the way our society functions in general. PoP touches on this social acceptance aspect in two ways. First, it allows groups of people to take pictures together. However, if there is even one person that PoP deems not pretty enough, it will refuse to actually take the picture even if the shutter is pressed. Only when those deemed as unattractive by PoP have left the frame, will it resume its expected behaviour. Second, by allowing bystanders to see the interaction, PoP creates interesting social dynamics surrounding shame and exclusion.
Team: Ella Stockmans & Daniel Rueda Lindemann