Melting Face
The “Melting Face” is a movement tracking, kinetic sculpture. The sculpture is constructed from metal piping, wire, pulleys and ice. When looking at the sculpture, it will slowly turn and look back at you. The tracking is done with a computer vision program written in Java (many thanks to Dano and v3ga for his blob code). The face is motorized with four servos controlled by an Arduino. This physical system interfaces with a PC connected to a video camera.
I wrote the Java face detection code in Eclipse. It uses the BlobDetection library written for Processing. To find the face of spectators, the program scans the image for polygons created by the torso and head and then approximates the location of the eyes based on the ratio between the two. The resulting x and y coordinates are sent serially to the ATMEGA microcontroller which then sends the appropriate command to each of the four servo motors - moving the face. An algorithm smoothes output to prevent jerky reactions and a steady and slow tracking gaze for the sculpture.
The face on the sculpture was made by taking a mold of my own face. The process involved being asphyxiated in silicon and then wrapped in plaster bandages. I had two straws to breathe through and was left to remain calm while it all cured for 45 minutes or so – but I think the results were worth it.
