Project #6 Experimental Camera - My soul is locked in the mirror.

Description

My experimental camera is derivate from a book I recently read. The book is consisted of several interviews with mental patients. I find that there are many factors leading to metal disease, such as anxiety, panic, pressure, etc. Experiencing many frustrations during this year, many people lost something. Some lost job, some lost mind and some even lost lives. This is a difficult year and many people have broken down. Our mentality has changed a lot in this year. When we look into the mirror, do we see ourselves in the mirror or do we see another person who just look like me, living in the world on the other side of the mirror? If you stare at the mirror for a long time, do you notice the other you in the mirror becomes stranger? You think you are staring at the mirror, however, why not is the you in the mirror is staring at you? The experimental camera is a psychic mirror. The function of this camera is to capture our spirit world, when we use this camera for a short time, we are able to see contours of our faces. These contours are our spirts or the other us in the mirror for we actually not sure whether we are living in real world. Wundt, in his Physiologische Psychologie, declares that as a matter of fact, we ourselves may in dreams experience almost all the manifestations which we observe in the asylums for the insane. I want to use this camera to reveal the mental instability when people fall into depression and call for attention to mental health.

Design Process

I have three sketched at the beginning. The first is to use pixels to break down a figure into small pieces. But after I do the research, I find that many people have done similar projects. The second is inspired by a recently popular filter on internet short videos. There will be some different shadows around users when users are moving around. Considering that the webcam on my laptop is not convenient to record the full figure, I did not choose this one. The third is my finished project. I continuously recorded a series of photos in a short period of time. Finally, a face figure will appear on the screen.

Reflections

The most surprising thing for me is to learn clmtrkr.js. Facial recognition is an important part of my project. In this project, I used many function()s to make my codes looks more organized. Every function is detachable, and the whole project is a mix of several different functions.