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serious
clam
dramatic
defensive
open
Overview - WhAT IS MEAN MUG?
This project celebrates emotional expression and looks at how facial expressions are often misread or misunderstood. It challenges the idea of a “poker face” and instead highlights expressiveness as something honest, powerful, and visually beautiful.
As a biracial Black woman, I grew up being told that my face showed “too much” of what I was thinking. Over time, I became aware that my expressions were often interpreted differently because of my race and identity, sometimes in ways that didn’t reflect what I actually felt or meant. This project reflects that experience and reclaims expression as something natural rather than something to hide or control.
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Face Tracking
The main interaction happens with a face tracking API which I was able to implement from Real Time Face Detection in p5.js by Kazuki Umeda’s Tutorial on face dictation. which was implemented into my p5.js.
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Word Input
Originally, I wanted to implement a survey aspect to fully grasp others interpretations of my face but opted for word inputs that i have experinced which I then correlated to each different emotion that the face detector had.
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Flowers
In addition to the words I opted for each emotion correlating with different flowers which generally represent beauty, spewing based on the different emotions to create almost an overgrown garden.
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OverGrown
As the interaction plays the more and more words and flowers appear almost covering the users face to a point where the face/ emotions can no longer be seen.
How - How i made this
Documentation
WHy - Why did i make this?
I choose to do this project mainly because of my own experiences growing up my facial expressions were constantly miss interpreted or I was told i had a mean mug, even when my face was neutral. I wanted to make an artwork which helps to reclaim ones expressiveness and reward users when they are expressive and show more then neutrality. My goal in this artwork is to reclaim expressive body language that I was taught to suppress, transforming it into something visible, expansive, and valued.
Overall Concept
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Right(Flowers/Creative)
Right side show flowers blooming to represent that expression
Meaning: represents a more beautiful picture when it comes to making expressions
Fluid, Growing Interacting
Correlated to the right brain being more creative
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Left (words/ Analitical)
Left Side represents the Data Input words based on the Expression
Meaning: The more rigid reality of what others think about one's expression from data inputs
Connects to the left side of the brain being more analytical
Related Works + Inspiration
Some works by other artist that inspired my work and also relate in a way that work with emotion as a driving factor to create their interaction or work.
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Vibe Check By Lauren Lee McCarthy & Kyle McDonald (2020)
This work is an interactive artwork which shows how people interpret each other emotional states though “vibes” Showing quick textual visuals on each reading
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mageNet Roulette By Trevor Paglen and Kate Crawford (2019)
This artwork focuses on the way people's appearances like the way that they dress and their expressions are classified in machine learning systems, highlighting the racist and misogynistic clarifications and stereotypes.
Scroll to see all the past ideations of “Mean Mugg” from the start where I followed by Kazuki Umeda’s Tutorial to implementing face tracking APIs and implementing the percentage of how many the face changes to different emotions which then connected to word outputs. Then implementing the different