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 # Lessons in how (not) to be heard
 
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 Lesson III of Hito Steyerl's [*How Not to be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File* (2013)](https://www.artforum.com/video/hito-steyerl-how-not-to-be-seen-a-fucking-didactic-educational-mov-file-2013-51651) is entitled "How to Become Invisible by Becoming a Picture". There are seven ways, the narrator explains: "to camouflage; to conceal; to cloak; to mask; to be painted; to disguise; to mimicry; to key." Steyerl smears her hands across her cheeks, and the marks she leaves quickly merge with those of the colour chart behind her; as if she is becoming transparent; becoming the picture of the lesson's title (of course, from the viewer's perspecitve, she already was). Now a hand appears, and begins applying what might be "concealer", as if by a makeup artist. And then we see a satellite image zooming in on a location in the California desert. Three blocks of colour: two white; one black. Around 2000, we are told, a new standard for satellite resolution targets like the one we are looking at was introduced. "In 1996, photographic resolution in the area is about 12-metres per pixel. Today it is one foot. To become invisible, one has to become smaller or equal to one pixel.” 
 
 There is so much in this passage. It brings to mind the practices of camouflage and masking developed by [protestors](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/technology/hong-kong-protests-facial-recognition-surveillance.html) in Hong Kong, in an attempt to thwart facial-recognition systems embedded throughout the city; but also the gender politics of makeup, and Zach Blas' [*Face Cages*](https://zachblas.info/works/face-cages/), which both obscure the face and encase it. Such is the logic of all masks, of course. Blas just makes the point particularly clearly. His cages "exaggerate and perform the irreconcilability of the biometric diagram with the materiality of the human face". But they also gesture in the opposite direction. Under conditions of ubiquitous computer vision, anonymity also comes at a cost.