Cyborgs, snapchat dysmorphia and AI-led surgery: has our digital age ruined beauty?
THE GUARDIAN
It’s the artist Qualeasha Wood who tells me about Snapchat dysmorphia, “a term coined by plastic surgeons who noticed there was a shift in the mid 2010s when people started bringing in their AI-beautified portraits instead of a celebrity picture”. To resolve your Snapchat dysmorphia, you get your real face remodelled to look like the ideal version of you that artificial intelligence has perfected on your phone screen.
There is a fundamental problem with this, says Adam Lowe, whose Factum Foundation in Madrid is at the forefront of art and technology, digitally documenting artworks and cultural heritage sites around the world.
When you have surgery to look like your best self as shown on a flat screen, the results in three-dimensional reality can be very odd indeed. You can feel Lowe’s sadness at the way plastic surgery botches human restoration in pursuit of screen perfection: “I have to look away,” he says.
Such are the paradoxes of the digital age explored in Virtual Beauty, an exhibition opening at London’s Somerset House on 23 July. The exhibition brings together more than 20 international artists to examine how artificial intelligence, social media and virtual identities reshape our understanding of beauty and self-representation in the digital age.