Slashdot Mirror
Electronic Art Changes to Suit Mood of Viewer
BFlatSeven writes "Reuters reports that 'British and American computer scientists have developed artwork that changes according to how the viewer feels. Special software picks up facial cues and adapts the color and brush strokes of the digital image.' The University of Bath has some pictures of the painting in action as well as a video and an abstract written by the creators."
How are they going to know I want to see hardcore erotica featuring members of all four Star Trek shows in zero-G sex? If they can make this work, I'll order a dozen!
Is anyone else concerned that we're building ourselves into badly tuned measure and control feedback loops? Hardware that reacts to its owner's feelings will influence the emotional state based on that same state for input. Oscillation might become a problem. Alternatively we could lock ourselves into one state through reinforcement from our reactive art.
Every day is repost day.
Or well, every repost is repost repost.
From TFA:
"It does all of this in real time, meaning that as the viewer's emotions change the artwork responds accordingly," he added in a statement.
In related news, Hentai stocks rose sharply.
Forget this. In memorial.
The idea for this is hardly new, I am pretty sure this was in a late 90's film called Antitrust with Ryan Phillippe. The Bill Gates stylee character had such a system in his house, I think it showed Heironymous Bosch paintings whenever he entered the room.
Art that changes the mood of the viewer. Now it will likely only enforce the mood of the viewer. e.g. if depressed, you get more depressed.
Hollywood knows since a long time that music can change our mood. I also did the test myself. When driving with 'calm' music, my driving style is easygoing. When I listen to more agressive music, I drive also more agressive and faster.
Also it is known that certain colours can change your mood. So it should not be that hard to make mood-altering art and if possible in a positive way, not like fox-news does it and brings you in a state of fear.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
wtf is EA going to do?
no doubt research making it will advance the topic of pattern recognition and machine-reading human facial expressions, but how does that qualify as an art form?
I thought art was about (human) creativity, about delivering a message via the selected method of expression; what i see in the TFA looks more like someone's first gimp exercise. Let's keep "art" out of it until the painting can understand the viewer and re-draws itself, or until the artist can decide how the painting reacts to emotions (and then watch out for those NSFW revealing paintings the slashdotter above dreams about).
So when I'm down and want cheering up, they show me depressing pictures. Fantastic.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
When this next-gen gamer looks at it, it immediately changes to a 3D-rendered image with all the latest effects.
I have fun read. My male parent is not.
The /. editor must have deliberately written the title to make us believe that this is a story about how EA is going to start listen to their audience and make good games again. Well this "viewer" is disappointed.
And Code is not "Poetry," in case that needed any clarification.
Happy to help...
Or does it work with Steven Seagal too ?
Mood rings, only this time electronic and hanging on the wall! Dude, pass that pipe over her.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
They should likely include, in the capabilities of the sytem, the ability to moderate moods.
eg. Sad -> Cheer you up
Anxious -> Calm you down etc..
I suppose you could find enormous uses for this in places like waiting rooms where everyone is just a little antsy. Just make sure that they have an adult lock on it -- wouldn't it be horrible to feel eerrr.. Frisky and have it show you something to moderate that mood? More likely then not, as proposed above, it would show you something you can "unsee" -- Milkshake rings a bell.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
Until some goth walks up to it, and it just goes completely blank. (or explodes)
This
so now us geeks can take a date to the exhibit, demonstrate how "enlightened" we are, and also determine if she's up for some hot lovin'?
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
This is art as yes-man. Art that modifies itself to agree with your displayed mood might seem pleasing, but what if you want to step outside of yourself? The greatest art that there is doesn't just regurgitate and reflect back at you what you feel, but it also takes you outside of your own perspective, changes your worldview, and might make you a new and better person. What about art that confronts us, challenges us, and forces us to consider new ideas?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
All of that would certainly be possible here as well. Change to *suit* the viewer, perhaps not, but probably better if it would react in certain ways to the viewer's emotions, taking the viewer's emotions elsewhere, which in turn would cause it to change again to take the user's emotions somewhere else, in what essentially amounts to a feedback loop. But then again, I believe that genre of art already exists. It's called a video game, although most people engaged in that art form don't think quite in those terms.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Will this make the EA GAMES or EA SPORTS logos more bearable? How about the other 30 ad's I have to watch before I can actually click start then play?
Inane Comments are Generously Disregarded
This is very useful for people who show their emotions as clearly as Marcel Marceau (that white-face French mime guy). As for the rest of us, how often does someone who is feeling down pull an extreme grimace like the one shown in the article? Basically, never - except perhaps when in combat, or on seeing a film as bad as "Vera Drake"... but suffice to say, at such moments of crisis we're unlikely to want to look at any paintings, let alone paintings that are liable to change make us angrier. Most people in galleries walk around with an neutral expression of detached interest. Thus for non-mimes the system will be unable to detect mood, and thus it won't work.
However, you could make a mildly amusing game using the system, kind of like a crazy mirror in an old funfair, where you would pull all sorts of weird faces and be vaguely amused amused by the way the picture changes colour as a result.
I bet it does this by creating a neverending stream of sequels and licensed bullcrap
Pictochat Art!!!
Looking ahead, I think this kind of technology would have more interesting applications in robotics.
As for whether or not it's art, there is some truth to the claim that art is in the eye of the beholder.
How often do you go look at artwork you may have on the walls of your home with a big, goofy grin on your face? Or stand in front of a painting while crying? I tend to have an esentially neutral expression on my face 90% of the time, and probably 99% of the time while looking at art in a museum. My eyes may widen in appreciation of truly masterful art, but I don't beam at the painting.
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am master of my fate and captain of my soul.
Does this really have to be more difficult than just reading the diameter of the pupil of the eye? The more fascinated we are, the larger it is. You could just work through different secanarios to find the one with the most positive reaction. Even Larry Niven used this as an aspect of one of his early novels, although in that case the effect was enforced by another person with "Plateau Eyes".
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I believe you are referring to this.
Why, oh why, did I search out and watch the video, when I knew that I was going to regret it?!? And I do. Oh, I do.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
... In Soviet Russia, art critiques you!
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Whenever someone's face is recognized as being on a terrorist watch list it will show a picture of the twin towers being hit with a big red circle around them and a slash through the center! Much better than those shoe searches.
Since happy people are more likely to buy stuff, I this could be used for sales? Get people to volunteer to watch TV with one of these monitors. The networks want information on viewer reaction for the purpose of ad placement. The trick is to avoid feedback loops by having one audience that reacts and a different one that gets the commercials.
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
While their current version says it shows somber imagery during a scowl and brighter imagery during a smile, there's of course no reason that can't be completely different. Further, the ability for something to change based on viewer-mood-recognition could in theory even enhance the thought-provoking nature of a piece of art. So it is not anti-art or anything by definition and the technology has some potential.
couldn't the same thing be done with mood ring technology?
:wq
I liked how the 'mood' of the faces were measured in two categories, pleasure and arousal wonder how it would respond to an O face
Could this(maybe not in this current incarnation, but the basic concept) exacerbate the existing mood? Like if I'm sad, and the painting becomes more dreary. So I get more melancholy, and the painting becomes progressively more depressing, until I am completely despondent. Or conversely, reinforce happiness to the point of mania? I suppose that might be in the 'preferences' dialog, do you want your mood reversed, or would you like it reinforced.
i wonder what happens if you have a screwed up face, or you're retarded will you just get extremely funny gameplay or lame gameplay?
Oscillation might become a problem
Indeed. Half of the world's population already experiences monthly oscillations. And the other half is painfully aware of this problem.
It is perhaps the oldest problem that has plagued humanity.