Eigenvekil: A Metaphor of Representative Democracy (2007) by Ali Miharbi - Eigenvekil (”Eigenrepresentative”) is an installation consisting of an LCD screen, a PC, a webcam and a digital print. When viewers look at the screen they see a real-time projection of their captured face image on the statistically calculated face features of all 550 members of the Turkish National Assembly. The viewer looks at the screen as if looking at a mirror, only to realize how limited he or she is represented. For the sake of generalization, political representation, mathematical representation and artistic representation all blur the features of the subject represented. Using these different types of representations, Eigenvekil points out a problem in representative democracy.

The technique chosen to be used for the reconstruction of the camera images is the eigenface method which, along with other similar face recognition techniques, is mainly used in surveillance systems for finding blacklisted or wanted individuals computationally. Countries such as US, Canada and some EU countries require biometric passport or visa photographs which are taken according to strict rules and guidelines in order to be stored in the governments’ databases in a standardized way. This way, the appearance of a person who gets in front of the camera can be compared to the people previously stored in the system. In this project, the previously stored face images are those of the members of the Turkish National Assembly. The face of the viewer in front of the camera is reconstructed by computer algorithms as if that viewer were one of the members of the Turkish National Assembly although he or she does not resemble to any of them and the result is directly shown on the screen