The last month has been interesting insight into approaches and
reflections on the area between art and science. For me, I am
interested in processes that merge the boundaries of the Science/Art
collaboration, influencing each other to create aesthetically engaging
and emotionally probing experiences that allow people to contemplate,
feel and learn. I am in the midst of building the Chameleon Project -
an emotionally interactive video installation exploring emotional
contagion built over two years (2008-2010), and ten prototypes. I am
working with a team including social neuroscientist Chris Frith,
emotion neuroscientist Hugo Critchley, affective computer scientists
Ros Picard and Rana El Kaliouby, human computer interaction scientists
lead by Nadia Berthouze and curator Helen Sloan. It is currently being
exhibited at London’s Natural History Museum’s After Darwin :
Contemporary Expressions (prototype 06), Fabrica in Brighton, UK
(prototype 09) and also Superhuman in Melbourne (prototype 07).
The project aims to explore the scientific foundations of emotional
contagion. Audiences and Chameleon’s digital video portraits interact,
infecting, rejecting and harmonizing with each other through emotional
dialogue of facial emotional expression. Social exclusion and
inclusion is explored, driving behavioral patterns, hierarchical and
social power structures to emerge as both the digital portraits and
participants constantly search for an emotional homeostasis and
understanding. Chameleon shifts between an exhibition, science papers,
scientific tools (emotion face reading technology, emotional contagion
video engine to capture emotion transfer, potent video database
stimuli to elicit emotions, interaction scenarios to foreground
emotional contagion) which can/are being used in scientific
experiments to further study emotion or help those who may have
trouble understanding emotions.
To achieve this, it was important to follow a reductionist method and
build the project in a modular way so parts of the Chameleon project
could be being adaptable for science experiments. We built the work in
progressions - to understand the complexities of the project, build a
stronger collaborative dialogue, create a visual language and
recurring milestones for all collaborators, and constant tests for the
robustness of the technology and audience feedback about interaction,
video, technology which would guide the next iteration.
By working with an artist, the scientific collaborators of the
Chameleon Project feel liberated to experiment in ways beyond the
highly controlled experiments that they are usually restricted to.
Chris Frith, sees the cross disciplinary collaboration as liberating
“This project has developed far beyond what I would dare to do in the
carefully controlled experiments that we are restricted to. But the
end result will provide us with marvelous tools for doing new
experiments.” Critchley writes, “As the installation develops, the
feedback from audience and one’s own subjective experience will be
informative in generating research ideas and focal studies. The most
compelling aspect of this is the capacity to engage.” Picard writes
“Here (the database) is an engaging palate for helping people who
don't naturally understand emotional interactions, and who want to
deepen their ability to do so.”
http://www.tinagonsalves.com/chamselectframe02.htm
http://www.newscientist.com/.../dn16964-digital-portraits-probe-the-contagion-of-
emotion.html
http://www.tinagonsalves.com
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