This research addresses the development of a computational facial language that enables systematic exploration of the external controlled human face with the aim to identify fundamental electro-facial choreographic patterns. Rewiring the human face to an external digital control system, has sparked a radical new way of thinking about the human facial display. Radical, as facial movement is now rooted in digital instead of neural computation. The human face has become an extension of a digital control system inheriting its characteristics: i.e. temporal accuracy, consistency of execution and high programmability. How do we conceptualize the thinking about the human face as a digital computational display device? What are the implications of the “regime change” from neural to digital? The research addresses these issues within the contextual framework where it also originated, in the practice of hacking. It uses the results oriented methods and strategies of hacking to analyze, explore and contextualize the human facial display as a site for digital computational expression. The contributions of this work include the following. 1) External facial control transgresses the neural performance limitations and enables us to think about facial movement from a digital computational choreographic paradigm. 2) A facial language, the Language of Facial E-motion, that allows systematic computational exploration of possible facial movement patterns. Choreologic probing of dynamic face space has brought about unseen facial movement patterns and has uncovered a latent expressive potential of the facial hardware. 3) An Electro-Facial Choreographic Nomenclature that describes the typical e-facial movement patterns in a binomial scheme that form the fundamental building blocks of electro-facial choreography. 4) External facial control has emancipated the human face from subjugation by the neural brain. Because the human face can be programmed at will, it can move freely, consistently and unencumbered; it metaphorically has attained Freedom of Facial Expression. 5) External facial control allows any external computational process to have unrestricted access to a possibly remote facial display. Consequently, the human facial display is made communist and has attained a Democratization of Facial Access on the hardware level. 6) On the meta level, the human face has found new uses, alienated from its original purpose of displaying the emotions, which is expressed by the German word “Zweckentfremdung.” 7) Facial hacking, as presented in this thesis, can be of value to the discussion about cross- or interdisciplinary artistic research as being clearly positioned in-between disciplines. 8) A facial control system that allows safe and concurrent facial muscle control by means of a multiplexed mono-polar muscle stimulus scheme.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:629162 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Elsenaar, J. A. |
| Publisher | Nottingham Trent University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/205/ |
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