AFTER YOU
WISANU PHU-ARTDUN (Q)
VDO installation and yawning detection (an experimental project)
Being a foreigner in my very first month here in Germany, I found it quite hard to get in a society. Although I tried to open up my self to others around me, I still felt like I did not belong to any of groups here. Moreover, I also had a feeling of having nothing in common and not connect to others.
One day I traveled by myself to Berlin. And experienced in a warmhearted situation which told me that people can connect to each other just by yawning.
Refference Story in Berlin
One day I traveled by myself to Berlin. I took an S Bahn and sat on the seat that 4 people have to face each other; One read a book, one was busy with his phone, one looked outside a window and I just sat and looked around. Suddenly, a guy who read a book started to yawn, the guy sat opposite him yawned, then the other woman and then me. We all unconsciously yawned after others who sat there. And then at the end of the yawning contagious finished, we all put every activity that we were doing away and looked to each other, then from out of nowhere everyone started to laugh. At that short moment, I felt like there was something connect we all together. Just like we were connected by an invisible chain of yawning contagious. Although it was a very short moment, it made me felt so warm-hearted and also felt like I belong to the society. This short moment means a lot to me because it was the turning point that made me want to still carry on.
Research & Review
After did some consulting sessions with my mentors, I came back to do some research about yawning contagious and found that some credible scientists said that we yawn after someone not because of we are tired or sleepy, but it is a primitive social behavior of human when we would like to share empathy and emotion to a group. Therefore, it is somehow related to my story and my feeling toward the yawning contagious.
How Does Interactive Art Create Meaning?
Interactive art artist; Scott Snibbe
Interactive art article by Ernest Edmonds
How Does Facial Recognition Work? | Brit Lab
Christian Moeller’s Mirror (1993).
Sebastian Errazurriz's "A Pause in the City That Never Sleeps"
Investigating the neuroscience of contagious yawns
Technology support
With help of my advisor - Jörgg Brinkmann, we decided to use Max MSP integrated with FaceOSC to create the yawning detection.
Bauhaus Summary, July 2017
To express this feeling of my own, to show invisible chain that can connect people together and also to express my wonder that why can't people just connect to others so easily just like the yawning contagious does? I would like to create an installation art containing 1 screen showing VDO looping of people and animal yawning with sound. It would be a close installation that allows one person visit at a time. And if a visitor happens to yawn after the VDO, they will get recorded and put into the VDO loop in order to continue the invisible chain which connects people by yawning.