Proposal (Second Draft)

I want to create a "virtual fish tank" for my final project. Exactly how it would work I'm not entirely sure yet but I want to have participants either knowingly or even unknowingly create entities by having their faces recognized by a camera. The entities would be various pieces of marine life that would stat to populate a fish tank that is displayed via a monitor. As more participants begin to have their personas collected, the fish tank will become more and more populated.

Each person will have their own unique fish tank entity, but to what extent they will be able to influence that entity I have no idea. I think that the most straight forward way of doing this would be to have simple facial recognition influence the entity, however, this may not be possible. I don't know how accurate the Processing facial recognition is or whether it can recognize simple emotions like frowns or smiles. So the participants could influence their fish by also using some sort of audio input.

Once this fish are collected, they will swim around in a predictable path or a random one. Something that is somewhat interesting to look at. Now it would be really cool if the fish behaved like actual fish and followed peoples fingers and reacted to people tapping on the glass but I don't believe that will be possible. Instead, I would like to have the fish "freak out" when people make a loud clapping noise. The fish would scatter around then calm down after a few seconds.

Proposal for final project

Having just started using video in our projects, I would definitely like to incoorporate video interaction in my final project. I've been interested in having a camera recognize facial expressions that can be used as part of some sort of game. Perhaps not quite a game in the usual sense, but some sort of interactive landscape that responds to body language and basic facial recognition such as angry or happy. Either emotion could affect how the image on a screen looks, going from desolate badlands to plush paradise. In addition to the landscape, a simple character can be controlled by the user, nothing complicated, maybe just a bouncing ball that responds to basic hand movements or sound input.

I have no idea how to do any of that, but that's why it should be a great challenge.

Another idea I would like to try is somehow using facial recognition to create entities that could interact with each other related to the emotions of the participants. So one example I might like to try is to have participants stand in front of a camera, have their image captured, and then turned into an entity such as fish in a tank. A bunch of people would all create their own fish avatar... a fishatar if you will. And don't know.. they could eat each other or something.

Industrial Design Stuff (for Laura)