Emotion Tracking Methods in Art and Science

compiled by Hans H. Diebner

Attention! This page will since July 2014 no longer be updated nor maintained. Due to weblinks, the page will persist, though. Reason is that emotion tracking methods as artistic means of expression are spent to my mind.

The term "Emotion Tracking" should be used with a grain of salt. What is tracked are gestures and mimic which are associated with emotion. Emotion becomes apparent in our behaviour or changing features of the body which are measured. Usually, we are unaware or at least not fully aware of the bodily expressions that correlate with emotion. We can and actually do use the expressions of others to judge their temper, benovolence, displeasure and so and so forth. But even from this exo-perspective we are often not fully aware of the reason why we are affected.

Measuring mimic and gesture can be used in psychological investigations. Also in surveillance with all the well-known side effects. And inportant aspect in the context of "Art&Science" applications is the usage of the data for control. In this context, whether one counts emotion-tracking to biofeedback depends to a certain degree on personal taste. Traditionally, biofeedback is defined via the measurement of internal biometrical (physiological) data. However, the external physical characteristics of the body are not independent of internal measures.

Scientific Examples

eMotion - Mapping Museum Experience "eMotion researches the museum-going experience experimentally. At the heart of the project is the investigation of the psychogeographical effect of the museum on the museum visitor."

Interview with Karl Grammer on Emotion-Tracking.

Humaine, Research on Emotions and Human-Machine Interaction. This website contains many bibliographic links as well as other links to sites focusing on emotion-tracking.

Image Understanding Research Group, TU München
Featuring EyeFinder, Skin Color Classification, Emotion Recognition, Person Tracking, Gesture Recognition.
"Knowing the user's emotional constitution the computer can improve its adaption to the current situation. That leads to an optimized human computer interaction (HCI). This project is intended to detect human emotion. E.g. detection a laughing face implies a happy person."

Art & Science Examples

Empathic Painting: Interactive stylization using observed emotional state. By Maria Shugrina, Margrit Betke, and John P. Collomosse.

Brentford Biopsy - Christian Nold with Daniela Boraschi, 2008