Over the last century, images of faces have become integral components of many institutional identification systems. A driver’s licence, a passport and often even a health care card, all usually feature prominently images representing the face of their bearer as part of the mechanism for linking real-world bodies to institutional records. Increasingly the production, distribution and inspection of these documents is becoming computer-mediated. As photo ID documents become ‘enhanced’ by computerization, the design challenges and compromises become increasingly coded in the hierarchy of gazes aimed at individual faces and their technologically mediated surrogates. In Western visual culture, representations of faces have been incorporated into identity documents since the 15th century when Renaissance portraits were first used to visually and legally establish the social and institutional positions of particular individuals. However, it was not until the 20th century that official identity documents and infrastructures began to include photographic representations of individual faces. This work explores photo ID documents within the context of “the face,”—a theoretical model for understanding relationships of power coded using representations of particular human faces as tokens of identity. “The face” is a product of mythology for linking ideas of stable identity with images of particular human beings. This thesis extends the panoptic model of the body and contributes to the understanding of changes posed by computerization to the norms of constructing institutional identity and interaction based on surrogates of faces. The exploration is guided by four key research questions: What is “the face”? How does it work? What are its origins (or mythologies)? And how is “the face” being transformed through digitization? To address these questions this thesis weaves ideas from theorists including Foucault, Deleuze and Lyon to explore the rise of “the face” as a strategy for governing, sorting, and classifying members of constituent populations. The work re-examines the techno-political value of captured faces as identity data and by tracing the cultural and techno-political genealogies tying faces to ideas of stable institutional identities this thesis demonstrates face-based identity practices are being improvised and reconfigured by computerization and why these practices are significant for understanding the changing norms of interaction between individuals and institutions.

Over the last century, images of faces have become integral components of many institutional identification systems. A driver’s licence, a passport and often even a health care card, all usually feature prominently images representing the face of their bearer as part of the mechanism for linking real-world bodies to institutional records. Increasingly the production, distribution and inspection of these documents is becoming computer-mediated. As photo ID documents become ‘enhanced’ by computerization, the design challenges and compromises become increasingly coded in the hierarchy of gazes aimed at individual faces and their technologically mediated surrogates. In Western visual culture, representations of faces have been incorporated into identity documents since the 15th century when Renaissance portraits were first used to visually and legally establish the social and institutional positions of particular individuals. However, it was not until the 20th century that official identity documents and infrastructures began to include photographic representations of individual faces. This work explores photo ID documents within the context of “the face,”—a theoretical model for understanding relationships of power coded using representations of particular human faces as tokens of identity. “The face” is a product of mythology for linking ideas of stable identity with images of particular human beings. This thesis extends the panoptic model of the body and contributes to the understanding of changes posed by computerization to the norms of constructing institutional identity and interaction based on surrogates of faces. The exploration is guided by four key research questions: What is “the face”? How does it work? What are its origins (or mythologies)? And how is “the face” being transformed through digitization? To address these questions this thesis weaves ideas from theorists including Foucault, Deleuze and Lyon to explore the rise of “the face” as a strategy for governing, sorting, and classifying members of constituent populations. The work re-examines the techno-political value of captured faces as identity data and by tracing the cultural and techno-political genealogies tying faces to ideas of stable institutional identities this thesis demonstrates face-based identity practices are being improvised and reconfigured by computerization and why these practices are significant for understanding the changing norms of interaction between individuals and institutions.

O princípio que norteia esta investigação supõe que o rosto, entendido como a principal ferramenta da expressão e da comunicação humana, configura-se, na modernidade, como uma superfície de inscrição de valores, padrões e signos que reverberam certa realidade dominante, respondendo a agenciamentos de poder, de acordo com o pensamento expresso pelos filósofos franceses Gilles Deleuze e Félix Guattari, no texto Ano Zero - Rostidade, na obra Mil Platôs (v. III, 1996). A fim de circular a ideia de um grande Rosto produzido por uma máquina abstrata da rostidade, a pesquisa resgata conceitos fundadores da produção de imagens, na fotografia e no cinema, tais como a fotogenia, a fisionomização e a tipagem, apresentando-os como atuantes dessa máquina, colaboradores dos processos que levam à produção de um rosto que se define pelo típico homem branco, de origem europeia, que obedece de modo quase incondicional aos valores de um sistema que, além de rostificá-lo, atua sobre sua consciência, suas vontades e seus desejos. Sistema comparado pelos autores ao muro branco-buraco negro, semióticas mistas de significação e subjetividade, a pesquisa buscou nas imagens que representam a figura humana, o que inclui representações do rosto pela arte moderna e contemporânea, evidenciar que a rostificação se torna visível pelos padrões produzidos pela máquina associados às imagens-clichês, viciadas, repetitivas e sem lastro, que respondem por estereótipos e apontam para preconceitos e racismos. Por outro lado, conceitos como afecção e sensação, também presentes no pensamento deleuziano, são indicadores de que as imagens possuem a virtual potência de nos mostrar um rosto, um rosto não rostificado, que iremos comparar ao mistério das imagens capazes de produzir enigmas no pensamento. / The principle that guides this research assumes that the face, understood as the main tool of the expression and human communication, appears, in modernity, as an inscription of values, standards and signs that reverberates a certain dominant reality, responding to power arrangements, in accordance with the thought expressed by the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, in the text Year Zero - Faciality, the literary work Thousand Plateaus (v. III, 1996). In order to move the idea of a big Face produced by an abstract machine of faciality, the research rescues founding concepts of production of images, in photography and cinema, such as the photogenic, physiognomyzation and typing, presenting them as active in this machine, employees of the processes that lead to the production of a face that is defined by the typical white male, of European origin, which obeys almost unconditionally to the values of a system which, in addition to facializing it, acts on his conscience, his wills and desires. A system compared by the authors to the wall white-black hole, semiotic mixed of meaning and subjectivity, the survey seeked in images representing the human figure, which includes representations of the face for modern and contemporary art to show that the face production becomes visible by the standards produced by the machine associated to the image-clichés, addicted, repetitive and without ballast, which respond by stereotypes and point to prejudices and racism. On the other hand, concepts such as affection and feeling, also present in the Deleuzian thinking are indicators that the images have the power to show us a virtual face, a face not facialized, which we will compare to the mystery of images able to produce enigmas in the thought.