Laser Grafitti

Emotional Attitude Presentation through Graphical Expression Graffiti me”

This is an interactive installation that evokes and presents the emotional reaction of a person to images of people, either unfamiliar (a model) or from the same social group. Emotion can be defined as complex short-term psycho-physiological experience of an individual’s state of mind, while interacting with internal and external (environmental) influences. This installation allows expressing emotion in a very direct way through non-verbal interaction: a photo presenting a portrait of a face is displayed on a projection screen. The visitor is invited to draw on the photo using an intuitive interface, creating a graffiti image overlaid with the face. The drawing is automatically mapped to areas of Nixon’s Wheel of Emotions, indicating the attitude of the user towards the portrait.

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Map of the relationship between face regions covered with graffiti and the underlying emotion. The Wheel of Emotion shown on the right consists of four concentric circles, each of them representing the emotional state as groups of similar emotions (placed next to each other) and antipodal emotions (displayed on opposite sides of the circle).

Interaction with the exhibit produces a graffiti image overlaid to the portrait of the model. Participants will be encouraged to express verbally how they feel about the image they created and their interaction with the exhibit.

The installation uses a laser pointer as interaction device and is designed to be explored by a single user and be observed by many viewers simultaneously.  Using a notebook computer a digital image is generated in real time and is visualised by a projector on a white screen. The position of the pointer is acquired by a camera.  The movement of the marker over different areas of the photo can be emphasised by changing the colour and transparency of its trace. The marker movement can also be used for real time sound generation, thus creating a richer experience for the user.