My functional prosthetic device:
My prosthetic device is simply a plaster cast of my face. It symbolizes both the physical and metaphysical side of me. Physically and visually it is recognizable as a face by which you can read my internal emotions. You are human and you are in my physical space, hence you can understand, relate and respond to the emotions which are conveyed through my face.
But this face is white, stark and blank and reveals no emotion. A computer in my physical space knows nothing of my facial expressions or what they mean and represent. Even when I have p
rogrammed the computer to respond to my physical gestures with this face, it only understands what I have told it to understand as it cannot possess let alone understand what these emotions mean.
I however have formed an emotional bond with my laptop. It is named Mrkusich and I say good morning to it and share my emotions with it. I give it human characteristics and pretend it responds. Hence, I feel a bond and a trust which leads me to using my computer as an expression for my emotions available for anyone around the world to access, bound not by the physical but by rather the vastness of universal emotion, whether my fleeting thoughts on Twitter, my photos and status updates on Facebook, my artwork on DeviantArt and Flickr and my blog entries. My virtual identity has become an integral part of how I express myself and my plaster cast represents this disembodiment of this express from the restraints of the physical.
When we are in different physical spaces and communicating through a computer. You cannot read what emotions I am conveying physically through my body language but you have access to the emotions I have chosen to convey virtually. You know nothing of my physical existence merely from my virtual identity as I can chose to share whatever I want, perhaps hence focusing more on my inner self than my physical self.
To bridge these gaps, my prosthetic reads and understands the physical triggers I input, each linking to a primary emotion. It then triggers a stream of images and words relating to this emotion and the resulting secondary and tertiary emotions. Any human sees these images and can relate to their connotations to trigger in them the same emotion and empathy, hence conveying my mood and enhancing our communication.
I chose four out of the six primary emotions to convey and explored how we express these using just the face and a hand and then wired up according triggers on my plaster face.
My prosthetic device is simply a plaster cast of my face. It symbolizes both the physical and metaphysical side of me. Physically and visually it is recognizable as a face by which you can read my internal emotions. You are human and you are in my physical space, hence you can understand, relate and respond to the emotions which are conveyed through my face.But this face is white, stark and blank and reveals no emotion. A computer in my physical space knows nothing of my facial expressions or what they mean and represent. Even when I have p
rogrammed the computer to respond to my physical gestures with this face, it only understands what I have told it to understand as it cannot possess let alone understand what these emotions mean.I however have formed an emotional bond with my laptop. It is named Mrkusich and I say good morning to it and share my emotions with it. I give it human characteristics and pretend it responds. Hence, I feel a bond and a trust which leads me to using my computer as an expression for my emotions available for anyone around the world to access, bound not by the physical but by rather the vastness of universal emotion, whether my fleeting thoughts on Twitter, my photos and status updates on Facebook, my artwork on DeviantArt and Flickr and my blog entries. My virtual identity has become an integral part of how I express myself and my plaster cast represents this disembodiment of this express from the restraints of the physical.
When we are in different physical spaces and communicating through a computer. You cannot read what emotions I am conveying physically through my body language but you have access to the emotions I have chosen to convey virtually. You know nothing of my physical existence merely from my virtual identity as I can chose to share whatever I want, perhaps hence focusing more on my inner self than my physical self.
To bridge these gaps, my prosthetic reads and understands the physical triggers I input, each linking to a primary emotion. It then triggers a stream of images and words relating to this emotion and the resulting secondary and tertiary emotions. Any human sees these images and can relate to their connotations to trigger in them the same emotion and empathy, hence conveying my mood and enhancing our communication.
I chose four out of the six primary emotions to convey and explored how we express these using just the face and a hand and then wired up according triggers on my plaster face.
The moving stream of images and words relating to each emotion spins at an increasing or decreasing rate, depending on the duration of the connection or the amount of times the connection is made with the emotions cross fading in and out of each other.
Full Image Credits
BIG thanks to all those who provided permission to use their images and for kind wishes on my project.
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