Emotional Bounds
Date: 2020
Medium: Browser based portrait generator using AI and facial recognition
Dimensions: Variable
Project Site: Please view in Chrome https://joels-share.s3.amazonaws.com/emotional-bounds/prototype/index.html
Collaborators: Anja Ulfeldt, Joel Simon, Primavera De Filippi
Instructions: In between moments can’t be forced, leave the project running while you work, chat, email, or whatever you do at your device and check back periodically to see your portrait collage emerge. When you like it, download using the buttons in the top left. Hint: To jumpstart the process try making some crazy faces into the camera!
Using an emotional classifier, the Emotional Bounds project consensually observes participants over time while they work at their devices and records only unclassified and uncertain facial expressions. Mapping beyond the bounds of classification allows users to create an intimate understanding of their own spaces of expression.
The datafication of every action or behavior online invites the progressive institutionalization of all aspects of life, including our emotions. Face recognition software is designed to identify, sort and classify images based on a particular set of predefined moods. By repurposing limitations and reimagining them as creative entry points, our goal is to generate intimate emotional portraits composed of expressions that cannot be easily classified in that they belong to a richer spectrum of human experience. Images are not collected or stored but rather persist only if the participant chooses to download their data set and recontribute it to the project.