A Dangerous Figure : Young and Unemployed in the UK
Installation art, app with custom computer vision software, graphic novel. Somerset House, London (2013-2014). Project by Alexander Augustus and released by his studio The Bite Back Movement with Seung youn Lee.
Computer vision engineer : Jack Greenhalgh.
Archived in the National Portrait Gallery, London, 2014.
Imagine if all the anger and frustration of the UK young unemployed were channeled into a single powerful entity. In the year 2013 the number of young unemployed hit the highest figure in UK history. In the media this issue was discussed only as a statistic and the human impact was brushed aside. I sought to make a platform for the public to convert these numbers back into the people they represented. The perfect location was Somerset House, a gallery opposite Westminster of National importance, which historically used to contain all of the records of the British population.
A Dangerous Figure was an online platform and touring exhibition which merged user-generated content into an “everyman” for the young unemployed. The journey began on an app; participants took a selfie, answered questions about their situation and mental health, and custom-built computer vision software merged their faces into the average as visitors watched online and in the gallery. This allowed them to remain anonymous, whilst giving a face to the issue. The artwork was covered by The Verge, Frieze Magazine, Art Monthly, and others, and as it went viral, this ambassador received submissions from over 10,000 participants - making it truly a Dangerous Figure.
Sister artwork to The Butterflies of Andokbul, and A Hidden Face.
According to Government statistics there became over a million young unemployed in the UK in 2013. The logo of the project - 1 of 1m - was also the boundary box which positioned your face when taking a selfie on the App. The questions asked by the app were similar to those on a job interview, but resulted in a letter which described the education, emotions, debt and activism of A Dangerous Figure.
A computerised stand greeted the visitors on entering the exhibition, allowing them to participate in the project. The general public left questions for the young unemployed to answer, and the young unemployed added their details and face image to the Dangerous Figure. It was designed to open dialogue.
On entering the gallery space the visitor was overwhelmed by literally thousands of real rejected job applications from young unemployed. Participants uploaded these via the app. At the end of the space is the user-generated and monumental face of the young unemployed participants. This is constantly shifting as more images are uploaded and added to the whole.
Computer Vision
An algorithm custom built for this project averaged together a random subset of images taken from a database of thousands of uploaded participant faces. The images in the subset were swapped out at random, which created the animation effect. Due to the nature of the algorithm the sequence constantly changed, and never repeated.
Each of the 4 coal-hole rooms contains a graphic novel, 2 chairs which face each other like a kind of interview room, and audio of many young unemployed people talking about their situation.
A Dangerous Graphic Novel is a narrative entirely created from user-generated dialogue from the many interviews I did with the young unemployed, activists, student union representatives, journalists, parents and employers. The audio from these interviews are playing in the coal-hole rooms in the space. The Graphic Novel aims to empower the young unemployed reader with information about their legal rights in the workplace, and warn off employers who seek to abuse young people desperate for work experience.
App / Urban installations
In 2014, O2 : Telefonika funded a series of A Dangerous Figure urban installations across the UK. Posters were installed in public places and participants invited to write their own letters on them. Alongside this, Don’t Panic magazine printed over 15,000 posters of the final face posters and letter from the young Unemployed participants, releasing them nationally.
“Youth unemployment is a robbery. If you're unemployed at a young age, you're more likely to be without work at a later age, and have lower wages for the rest of your life. "Scarring" they call it. That's why we need to give young unemployed a voice, to organise people so we can transform lives and give people hope”
— Owen Jones for the A Dangerous Figure project
