ARtFaces. Augmented Reality Filters, Art, and the Constitution of Identity in Algorithmic Media

The article examines Augmented Reality Filters (ARFs) applied to the human face (AR-Face). After highlighting two key issues (Snapchat dysmorphia and ARF branded versions), the article focuses on the artistic uses of ARFaces (ARtFace) and draws a typology of them. In light of their creative and reflexive uses, ARFaces appear technologically assisted and oriented dispositives for the visual constitution of their users’ identities. More specifically, ARFaces takes up the tradition of the self-portrait but orients it in the novel direction of an endless and dynamic redetermination of the portrayed face. The result is an open, hypothetical, unstable conception of identity and a crisis of the face due not to its disappearance but rather to the excess of its presence.