Obscuring Reality - Tech+Art | Genius: Picasso
[Music] Most people think about art as objects that you put something in a gallery, like a sculpture or painting. But for us, art is a system, a feeding system; it's almost like a layer of magic on top of reality. I would say that we are artists who work with software and hardware. We work with technology, but to make artistic expression.
He asked me to work on the project with him, and for some reason, he always asked me to work on a project at a bar. I personally love things I can touch, so I love working with hardware. I love electronics. I have a lot of patience with debugging hardware problems, and that is kind of the contrary. He is really good at software and software debugging.
When there's an integration coming in, we both are doing kind of what we like. I really want to find a way to visualize emotions so other people can understand how a person is feeling and to have some kind of empathy. If they can see the emotions being visualized, so this app can actually visualize your speech based on the volume, how many words you speak, and how fast you speak it.
It's almost like an audio visualization and turns into a mask that obscures your face. Really weird stuff, especially with the face; like cut parts of the face, take the eyes, extend them out. I’d really kind of play with the face and then use that almost as a kind of mask. Like take your left and your right eye, create a crown of them around your head, and then use that to hide your identity.
We've been experimenting a lot with space, using AR to put things in 3D space, like put images, video, or sound, and type was a natural progression in those experimental sessions. What does it mean to both words in space? So Weird Type is an AR app that you can install on your phone, and it allows you to write text and then place that text in 3D space, so that you can write a message, and you can place it.
As you move, the type can change or animate, but it really is like floating in the air. MoMA Land, I have just been experimenting and playing with them, making these weird expressions in the studio and posting them online. It's so nice to actually have something that we can give to people, that people can try and they can have the same sort of joy that we've been having.
So these technologies are already out there: face tracking, computer vision techniques, and machine learning techniques. They're out there, and what we're trying to do is appropriate them and use them for artistic and creative expression. Also, to suggest we can use them in completely different ways, in ways that governments are not intending and companies are not intending. But artists can sort of suggest different possible futures. [Music]