Massive Attack Turns Concert Into Facial Recognition Surveillance Experiment
Massive Attack used live facial recognition technology on concertgoers, turning surveillance into provocative art that sparked debate about privacy.
If this disturbs you, then good. That was the point.
These guys are amazing. Of all the shows I saw at Roseland NYC, theirs in 96 was the absolute best.
The singer has always been about exposing problems the media won’t cover. I think it actually led to a schism and a few of the members leaving about two decades ago.
Did you see portishead? Just curious.
Cowboys by Portishead gives me goosebumps every time I hear it
Edit: Link, because I had to go listen to it as it's been years: https://youtu.be/ApQpx-MVk0w
Summer of 97. I had just turned 18.
Whenever I hear, teardrop, I am transported back to that night at Roseland.
Roseland was perhaps the greatest musical venue ever do exist. Better than CBGBs.
To be clear, the system picked out faces in the crowd, in the "yes, this is a face" sense. They were labeled in what appears to be random terms like positive, kind, nostalgic, bee keeper, gif animator, extreme ironer. No personal identification.
Yeah this article is hot garbage. What "biometric data" are they talking about??? Just images of people's faces? My understanding is that it's super commonplace in public locations, are people really that surprised?
Yes, while its generally common on this platform, we are early adopters for tech so we understand it first. The general public gets exposure much slower, especially when there is efforts to subvert it for profit.
Attention and time are limited, those that focus on tech know things first. Its the same as a chef knowing about food more than the average person.
extreme ironer
I did come across that hobby when I was trying to list examples of productive sports. Yeah, it's a thing.
So a normal concert?
Still, why the fuck does that exist, and why is it allowed? It shouldn't be there.
I think that was their point... to call out the use of facial recognition
Yeah
No shit
That was the point
I believe this would be illegal in Illinois, which regulates biometric data collection
The only people offended by this are the ones who dont yet understand that this is happening constantly all over the place without your consent already.
Something happening all the time doesn't mean that it's good and you should just accept it.
No of course not. But in order to be able to not accept it, you have to know about it in the first place. Thats what this is perfect for. No harm done, lots of eyes opened.
Which would be most people?
Yes, the ignorants, which is exactly why we have artists, it's basically their most important jerb
It’s a great way to showcase that these things are in use and will be in use in places with bad privacy laws (and by those that ignore such laws). Most people don’t want to think that this happens on a daily basis, it’s logical for them when you tell them, but they’re busy with their lives and they don’t actually see it being done with their own eyes.
Now tell them how this data is connected to your ticket and your face/video being analyzed after the fact, which is then sold off to become what is basically an quantification of you as a person to judge you and determine what your addictions, views and flaws are, in order to expoit it to make you as miserable as possible. And people won’t really believe it since it’s uncomfortable to believe in. Showing someone’s face makes it more believable and difficult to ignore.
The only people offended by this are those who have something to hide!
/s
Social media erupted with bewildered reactions from attendees. Some praised the band for forcing a conversation about surveillance that most people avoid, while others expressed discomfort with the unexpected data capture.
Unlike typical concert technology that enhances your experience, this facial recognition system explicitly confronted attendees with the reality of data capture. The band made visible what usually happens invisibly—your face being recorded, analyzed, and potentially stored by systems you never explicitly agreed to interact with.
The audience split predictably along ideological lines. Privacy advocates called it a boundary violation disguised as art. Others viewed it as necessary shock therapy for our sleepwalking acceptance of facial recognition in everyday spaces. Both reactions prove the intervention achieved its disruptive goal.
Your relationship with facial recognition technology just got more complicated. Every venue, every event, every public space potentially captures your likeness. Massive Attack simply made the invisible visible—and deeply uncomfortable. The question now isn’t whether this was art or privacy violation, but whether you’re ready to confront how normalized surveillance has become in your daily life.
This is why I no longer go out in public.
I dont go out because outside costs $250 a day.
🤔
Good. A little bit of shock treatment is just what the doctor ordered.
Now consider this to coldplay concert where they urged the crowd to send love to Charlie Kirk's family lol.
It's okay, if Coldplay is a honeypot to lure execs onto camera to self-own
Damn lol. Didn't think I could like coldplay any less.
This disturbs me in the best way. I love/hate it.
I wonder how long they can run this before their backend database vendor cuts them off with some flimsy pretext because this kind of thing is bad for business.
No backend database needed for what they did. It was just highlighting where the faces are in a shot of the crowd, same as modern smartphone cameras do, but with a surveillance-type UI around it.
Thanks, I just watched the video linked by @spizzat2@lemmy.zip and I see that now. It’s actually a little disappointing and I’d love to see the same kind of public spectacle on hard mode with real-time doxxing from a commercial backend. That would be far more provocative.
I think the article hugely understated that nuance.
Pretty cool... But anyone else get major AI vibes from the way this article is written?
Why even become a journalist anymore if you're just going to be putting prompts into a black box and copy/pasting the output?
This article gives me vibes that someone wrote a few lines outlining the situation and asked the AI to write the article itself. Interestingly though, I think most people would just rather read the outline, less time wasted and less llm.
A part that screams AI would be:
This wasn’t subtle venue security—your biometric data became part of the artistic statement, whether you consented or not.
"This isn't this--it's that" is an extremely common AI sentence structure, further exposed by the fact that the part before the em-dash doesn't even make sense to begin with. No one was asking themselves whether it was part of subtle venue security.
As a sidenote, sometimes I read sentences like this and I wonder "could this ever even have been written by a human?" I think that there's a very low chance that this article didn't have at least some amount of AI involved, but I know that somewhere out there there must be some people who actually write like this. And that's kind of sad.
tbh I don't even know why I even wrote this, the entire article appears to be one big example of generic AI writing
"The Consent Question Nobody Asked"
Yeah, that tastes like AI this turn of phrase
But that's what capitalism is all about! Efficiency.
Now one journal-ist can produce hundreds of art-ickles per hour!
/s
Good. People don't understand implications until it happens to them. Suddenly they don't like this security features anymore because it became personal.
We need more people to experience that discomfort
People getting mad at massive attack are missing the point completely
Massive Attack = Banksy. You heard it from me first. Or maybe you didn't and you knew it already all along.
Shhht, the british government is looking for him
this isn't new, this has been hypothesized for many years now
Nice, face recognition surveillance for sure is because to protect our childrens.
Who the hell can afford children ?
Some people on islands can afford many
It's crazy that suicide among youth has gone up in the past 20 years. Whatever they're doing to "protect the children" they need to stop.
the 20th anniversary of mezzanine @ radio city with full orchestral band all instrumental was wiiiiild too; kudos!
https://x.com/IpswichPolice/status/1892910824517177743
I do trust Massiva Attack more than this violent gang of thugs
The public were just nice to them while they were being evaluated for termination.......
What is wrong with the populace of ipswitch ? Are they all cattle already ?
That was one god awful website. Holy shit. Why would anybody willingly visit that site. Wtf
It's ok-ish?
yeah it was way less offensive than the typical news sites that get posted
pinhole ftw?
To review gadgets ofc..
OH!
Citizen, this is the warm embrace of Father State and Mother Country taking care of you. Everywhere. All the time. We care about you. We worry about you. And if we feel like you need help, we will help.
It wasn't live. They use the same footage at every concert.
Welcome to The Truman Show.
If you live in a city (not only) anywhere, you are on at least 5-10 security cams when you leave your home on the way to work or the store, more counting those in your workplace and the store. Unknown how much are with face recognition soft. Think of it, you are tagget.
Worst knowing that a lot of live cams are even with public access and even streaming on YouTube.
Same software was used in the Netherlands on Appelpop.
funny enough my thesis involves orwellian spying, palantir type of shit
Was this an attack or just some artistic BS? The article is unclear. Mostly because the article wasn't written by a person.
Massive Attack is the name of the band. The article was not ambiguous about that
I definitely parsed the headline wrong at first! But c'mon, even if you've never heard of the band, the second sentence of the article links to their webpage...
I'll gladly introduce you to Massive Attack because it seems you never heard of these Trip Hop legends from Bristol.