The Mood of The Beholder

Following two previous posts about art perception (The Eye of The Beholder and The Brain of the Beholder) and my own virtual art exhibitions, this story seems to be a logical progression in the sequence - with a twist. While the previous two posts dealt with the personal perceptions of art by the viewer, this story is about art perceiving the viewer.  How about interactive art to reflect your mood?  Interesting. But do we really want other people in a public place to gauge our mental state?  (via 3 Quarks Daily)

"British boffins have built a digital picture frame that adapts its image to suit the mood of the viewer. Dubbed 'empathic art', the interactive image responds visually to eight distinct facial expressions.

Created by a team from the UK's University of Bath computer science department with the help of workers from the Boston University - Massachusetts not Lincolnshire - the rig pairs an LCD panel with a webcam trained on the viewer's face. Software extrapolates the viewer's expression, and matches it against a series of facial patterns to yield two scores: pleasure and arousal.

The figures give a feel for the viewer's emotional state and are used to apply digital image processing routines - think Photoshop filters - to the image on display in real time. The image updates at a rate of 4fps.

When the viewer is angry, the colours are dark and appear to have been applied to the canvas with more violent brush strokes, said Dr John Collomosse of Bath's Computer Science faculty. But if they appear happy, the artwork adapts so that the colours are vibrant and more subtly applied.

“This results in a digital canvas that smoothly varies its colours and style, and provides a novel interactive artistic experience," he claimed."

I wonder how accurate the mood reader is when faced with different racial features, complexions and culturally influenced expressions of happiness and anger.

Comments

[Sujatha]

The software that interprets the viewer's facial expression makes the determination of the viewer's mood by examining factors like position/shape of the mouth, openness of the eyes and angle of the brows. These would be independent of race and ethnicity, I think. More details at Bath Univ. website

[Sujatha]

Looking closer at the sample photos that trigger the changes, what I would really like to know is how well the software interprets subtler changes in the physiognomy. Not everyone who is unhappy, angry or sad goes about with as exaggerated a demeanour as the example photos indicate! If I had a neutral facial expression, with sadness indicated by very slight changes in the mouth/eyes, would the art change accordingly?

[Dean C. Rowan]

"[A] novel interactive artistic experience": not quite. It's novel inasmuch as we don't expect machines to gauge our emotions, nor do we expect inanimate objects to morph accordingly. But interactive artistic experiences are common. Consider live performances of certain kinds of music (say, punk rock or highly improvisational jazz, rather than a classical string quartet) in which a feedback loop between the audience and the performers emerges. The audience's growing excitement stimulates the performers to intensify the performance, and so on.

[Ruchira Paul]

Sujatha:
I wouldn't expect the software to be terribly subtle - not yet anyway. Although I don't know. That is why I asked the question about differences in color, culture etc. For example, can it read changes in the expression in a very dark face or a more stoic Asian visage rather than the more clearly expressive face as shown? I doubt it.

Dean:
I guess they mean in classical visual art like paintings and sculpture where the object for viewing is set in stone, as it were . Music, street theater etc. of course have been interactive for ages. In Indian classical music for example, often the tabla player and the musician (both vocal and instrumental) would try to trick each other into missing a beat. This often becomes a theater of wits between the two, with much hilarity and excitement from the audience.

I guess with computer technology entering the realm of art, we can expect more and more gimmicks. Perhaps one day we can choose a desirable ending for the movies we watch - much like the quest video games.