“How Normal Am I?” nominated for best .eu website of the year – Project Sherpa

The interactive documentary “How Normal Am I?”, launched by our artist-in-residence Tijmen Schep in October 2020, shows how facial recognition algorithms are used to judge people. By taking a test, the documentary analyses and rates your face in terms of age, beauty, and gender. It also assesses your emotional state and estimates your BMI and life expectancy.

The documentary finally highlights the unreliability of facial recognition algorithms and the importance of safeguarding privacy, as a fundamental human right, and “our right to be different. You could say that privacy is a right to be imperfect.”.

“How Normal Am I?” has seen a tremendous growth of interest in the past few weeks. This seems to have happened after a few TikTokkers started playing with the project’s beauty scoring ability. In one week the documentary was viewed 100.000 times, and at the moment of writing this blog, it has been viewed a total of 426.000 times.

The project is a nominee for best .eu website of the year. The public can vote on the outcome at .eu Web Awards, so if you like the project, your vote is appreciated. It only takes one click.

The project has also been signed up for the IDFA Doclab competition. Doclab is part of the International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA) and focuses on interactive media.

If you haven’t experienced the documentary yet because you just don’t trust it: vlogger Voy Zan has created a YouTube video that walks you through the project.