Global Level of Confidence aims to create a connection between the disappeared and the children of the disappeared in Argentina. Under the dictatorship (1976–1983), military personnel disappeared an estimated 30,000 individuals. Today, there are hundreds of children of the disappeared who do not know the real identities of their parents. The project is a collaboration with Argentina's National Bank of Genetic Data (Banco Nacional de Datos Genéticos), which is a public and systematic archive of genetic material and biological samples of relatives of people kidnapped and disappeared during the Argentine military dictatorship.  

One of the objectives of the project is to drive more people to get a free appointment at the Genetic Bank and get sequenced to conclusively reunite families. To do this, an AI face recognition algorithm has been trained with the growing public database of records that document the identities of the disappeared, such as the one from the Parque de la Memoria. To perform the biometric search, visitors' facial landmarks, registered by their webcams or phone cameras, are analyzed and sent to a secure server in Iceland. The platform will scan its nearly 10,000 records for physiological affinities and offer the top 15 to 30 potential closest matches between the visitor's facial landmarks and the faces documented in its archive. Visitors can select the resulting records and read more about each individual. Global Level of Confidence is built for mobile and desktop devices, and large displays.  

Global Level of Confidence continues the research started in 2015 with Level of Confidence, an art project made to commemorate the mass kidnapping of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa normalista school in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico. 

Use of AI:  
The platform uses to facial recognition models: face-api.js for face matching & extracting facial landmarks and MediaPipe for real-time face detection. AI has not specifically been utilized in the programming of the artwork, but it is elemental to the function of it. Viewers of the work place themselves in front of a camera, the two AI models extract and process the information necessary to conduct the facial matching process, thus drawing the viewer into relation with those disappeared in the dictatorship.  

The level of confidence reported in this process serves multiple functions. Those who are not immediately (or genetically) implicated in the project are drawn into a discourse and awareness of the sociopolitical context of the disappeared. Those who are more thoroughly implicated in the results are then offered an exceptionally thorough route to entering into dialogue with the Genetic Bank of Argentina.  

It is important to note that the platform does not store data; it only analyzes data points, which are facial landmarks. The integrity of the data and its location in Iceland is part of our collaboration with artist and activist Julian Oliver, who engineered the backend of the project. The front end is coded by Saralin Zassman, David Robert, and Lauria Clarke at Antimetric. 

Concept, design, direction: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer 

Antimetric Institute Programming: Julian Oliver, Saralin Zassman, Lauria Clarke, David Robert 

Installation: The first installation of *Global Level of Confidence* occurred in the context of "The Illusion of Thinking," an exhibition at V2_: Lab for Unstable Media in Rotterdam, NL, December 12, 2025–January 18, 2026.

Antimetric Institute is a non-profit organization at the intersection of art, technology, and activism. Founded and directed by artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (MX/CA), the institute supports participatory media artworks, campaigns, workshops, and publications that foster civic engagement, enhance data literacy, and promote social change. Examples of past works include the *Border Tuner*, interactive project that connected the cities of El Paso, USA and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, for which a book and film are forthcoming. By using, supporting, and contributing to open-source and commons-based models, Antimetric builds durable, accessible, and inclusive cultural projects.

Among the projects considered by the jury, this one stood apart in its orientation. Where others sought to optimize systems or scale services, this project turned its attention to something more difficult to measure, yet no less essential: the psychological and emotional experience of people separated from their families by displacement and conflict. It asks what it means to maintain confidence in oneself, in others, and in the possibility of reunion under conditions of profound uncertainty and loss. 
 
Through an inventive combination of research methodology, participatory practice, and artistic form, the project creates a space in which the human reality of displacement becomes both tangible and understandable to audiences who may have no direct experience of it. The jury recognized in this work a rare quality: the capacity to generate both practical insight and genuine empathy, reaching people not only through data, but through human resonance. 
 
This project belongs as much to the world of humanitarian action as it does to the world of art, which is precisely why its presence within the Ars Electronica context feels so fitting. We believe its exhibition in September has the potential to spark exactly the kind of public conversation that can reshape how societies understand and respond to people who are forced to move. The jury was pleased to recognize it with distinction and looks forward to seeing that conversation unfold.