Final project proposal

❋ Group project with Jiaqi Yi ❋

Jiaqi and I have a few different ideas, but they all sort of try to do a similar thing: create an interesting and playful connection between different people in two locations. So we're planning an installation that includes two screens, each equipped with a webcam that is live broadcasting, from one screen to the other.

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#1: Frame Differencing

For each stream that is created locally, it is duplicated and one is set to play with a tiny delay after the other. The only pixels being drawn on the screen are the ones whose color changed between one frame and the next one. This way, we get a trace of anything that moved, while everything that remained the same gets removed from the screen.

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The interaction we’re hoping to create is one that encourages movement and playfulness  — people would have to be in constant motion for their image to appear on the screen. We also intend to combine the outputs from both cameras so that it’ll create some form of a collage of the movements of people in both locations. The effect we’d like to achieve is an interplay of duplicated body parts of different people interacting with one another.

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Frame Difference p5 reference by Kyle Mcdonald

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#2: Eye Zoom

Once a face is being detected in the stream, the image zooms in and focuses on the eyes. That way, each screen displays a set (or sets?) of eyes staring into your own eyes. Each screen would only activate in the presence of a person, and would only show the eyes of people from the other screen, if they're available.

The experience we're hoping to create here is one where you're both watching and are being watched, and you're essentially watching because you're being watched. Like two strangers staring into each other's eyes without knowing it.

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Considerations

In either case we'll have to see if it makes sense to only show the other screen on each screen, or show them both on both screens (see the same thing). This has a great effect on how this feels like and looks like so we'd like to test both options and make a more informed decision. It is possible to combine the two, but this requires some testing too to see if it doesn't feel like too much going on. I think this shouldn't feel hard or confusing to people, but be inviting and playful. So... lot's of testing to do!