Hardware Setup

Initial Sketch

Experiments with the holder

Placed on head, camera facing the wearer, screen facing out. Tools used;

Phone holder
Headphones
Bİke Helmet

This model of display did not work, because the holder was too heavy to be balanced on the head. And since the camera cannot be too close to the face(to see and detect the face) the weight distribution was faulty.

Placed on the shoulder, camera facing the wearer, screen facing out.

Phone holder
Adjustable strap
Backpack(to carry the laptop connected to the camera)

This model was more stable than the head ones. The holder is clipped to the strap to ensure the stability with the help of the upper body that the strap goes around.

Camera

An external camera (an action camera which has a wide angle lens built-in) successfully set within the software setup process, which was more or less a cyclical process that went together with the hardware setup.

Software Setup

Phase 1: Backend

Sources used;

OpenCV Face Detection
DeepFace Emotion Recognition

Starting with the OpenCV library which enabled face detection from the camera input, instances of the face each second are fed to DeepFace algorithm. DeepFace gives an output of the emotional data, labeled on the face. The default emotion read-write was too fast(<1 sec intervals) to be used for a more stable visual which will be done in the further process, therefore a limiter is designed to output the emotion only when the same emotion is shown at least 2 times in a row.

Phase 2: Frontend

The emotion output is used for controlling a simple p5.js sketch on the website where all emotion detection visual coming together. This experiment was successful so it created space for elaborating the emotion driven visual.

Phase 3: Emotion Signifier Visual

Using pure javascript, a particle system consisting of several ellipses in different sizes and with different alpha values in their color, moving gradient effect is created.

To select the colors that signify emotions, a research on color psychology is made to better understand the interpretation of colors. The psychological effects of colors on human mood and behavior stem from the electromagnetic radiation of light and are a universal, psychophysical response that is less impacted by factors such as culture, age, and gender than commonly believed. It's important to distinguish between color psychology and color symbolism. Color symbolism refers to the context in which colors are used, while the psychological properties of colors relate to the general moods they evoke in people(Wright, 2008 as cited in Kurt & Osueke, 2014). In the context of this project, the visual aims to transfer the general feeling to viewer by building a layer to distort the reality, rather than putting it inside the limits of an emotion.

Besides the effects of the physical property of colors on human psychology, a couple of studies suggest that humans are hard-wired to understand and interpret certain colors as part of the natural processes that keep the most primitive actions going. Trichromatic color vision, according to Changizi and coworkers (2006), evolved so that primates could detect minute color changes in the skin caused by underlying blood flow. Visual sensitivity to these modulations is thus extremely useful in interpersonal interaction because they reflect the emotion, state, or condition of the perceived mating pairs (as cited in Elliot & Maier, 2014).

I also appreciate the distinction between color psychology and color symbolism. While color symbolism can be influenced more by cultural and contextual factors, color psychology focuses on the inherent emotional and psychological effects of colors. By understanding these effects, the color combinations used in this work can be communicated in a way that is not only aesthetically pleasing but also emotionally representative. By building a layer of color on top of reality, I can create a visual experience that is both familiar and unfamiliar, creating a sense of unease or disorientation in the viewer. This technique allows me to communicate emotions and ideas in a way that goes beyond the limits of traditional representation.

Colors representing the wearer's emotions are

Neutral

Colors from nature such as greens and earthy tones to trigger the calm feeling

Sad

Gray tones to represent the "missing"

Happy

Orange and yellows to which are connected to optimistic thoughts.

Surprised

Bright purple and magenta to trigger the curiosity

Angry

Dark reds to trigger the negative/hostile feelings

Fear

Bright red and green to trigger the alertness

Phase 4: Connection to the hardware & collecting the signifier output

For showing the same web page that is hosted on the laptop, the phone used as the screen should be connected to the same wifi. This method has its disadvantages and advantages such as not being able to make it full screen on the phone(not impossible but also not easy since the wearer has so little control over the screen) but also there is no significant latency for the display of the emotion signifier output.

An alternative to this solution might be broadcasting the laptop screen directly on a platform so that when it is displayed on the phone screen, the control is easier, while it requires a remote operator of the laptop. However after the experiments, using the tools OBS and YouTube streaming, there was a long latency period that the visual loses its purpose of being in sync with the real facial expression of the wearer. Therefore it is better to go with the first option which connecting via wifi.

During the video walk, an automated screen capture script is used. The script enabled to have a capture every 10 seconds.

while [ 1 ];do vardate=$(date +%d\-%m\-%Y\_%H.%M.%S); screencapture -t jpg -x ~/Desktop/ss/$vardate.jpg; sleep 10; done

References

Elliot, A. J., & Maier, M. A. (2014). Color psychology: Effects of perceiving color on psychological functioning in humans. Annual Review of Psychology, 65(1), 95–120. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115035

Kurt, S., & Osueke, K. K. (2014). The Effects of Color on the Moods of College Students. SAGE Open, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244014525423