Introscape

In Introscape your facial expressions are encoded into a dynamic landscape. The camera detects sadness, fear, joy and surprise in your face and changes the landscape accordingly. 

Introscape was created as part of the game jam “Coded Emotion” where game developers and people from theater and opera came together for a weekend.

Concept
Introscape is a tiny experiment for now, but future versions were envisioned to be used as a tool to extend the stage of the theater or opera. Actors or singers could use their voice and facial expression to directly change the visuals of the stage. 

The AI of the facial recognition software requires you to show emotions the way Google Images thinks sadness or surprise looks like as it has been trained on this widely accessible data. This could be changed with custom fed data but it opens an interesting analogy. For the software to recognise the actors they need to adapt to the AI, similarly to how people often adapt to norms and expectations posed by society. 

The event was organzied by A MAZE, the Berliner Ensemble and the Komische Oper Berlin in 2021 and supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.  

Developers:
Mylene Ben Osman
Torbjorn Heide Arnesen
Robin Baumgarten 
Marek Plichta
Simon Lesemann