Humans are all about pattern realization : we want — and maybe need?—to believe that there ’s order and mean behind everything we see and do in life . The future is divined in teacups , superstition are put on random objects , and — of course of study — we see ourselves in everything around us . Like the sky .
Shinseungback Kimyonghun , a Seoul - establish tech art collective , focalise largely on computer vision , so most of their body of work take the form of script , with results that often verge on poetic . Their latest task , Cloud Face , uses facial recognition to get wisp and puff of air of vapor that — for a abbreviated heartbeat — converge to forge the semblance of a human face .
speak over email today , the artists excuse that the estimate came about after they attempted to capture tangible human face using a webcam strung to the last of fishing rod , hang out a window . It returned a bonny number of human visages — but it also picked up Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree , supergrass , and random nonliving object that the software recognized as human - enough . “ I looked up in the sky and thought ‘ What if I use this error and have it witness faces in swarm ? ’ , ” Kim Yong Hun remembers . “ The find of the erroneous belief top me to explore calculator ’s visual sensation itself . ”
So the duo set out to build a arrangement that would becharm swarm look automatically . They build a custom handwriting using Processing and the OpenCV facial espial depository library , and set up a DSLR pointed at the sky , which transmitted range to a computer where the program was running . Then , they sat back and lease the magic trick encounter :
As soon as I opened my eyes in the morning I would check out the sky if it had a ‘ proper ’ pattern for face detection … The faces used in the ‘ Cloud Face ’ penning were selected by us manually . That means the faces are agreed upon as face by the computer vision and our visual sensation .
They ended up enamour over 150,000 images of the sky — in which their book discover 1,000 faces . Which is n’t a bad ratio , view the odds ?
Cloud Faces build on research being done by scientists who are concerned in why — and how — our Einstein are so good at seeing faces in things like clouds , toast , and rotting forest . A 2007 clause inThe New York Timesspoke to several scientists working on facial recognition , at least one of whom argued that it represents a all important piece of human evolution :
Dr. Sinha of M.I.T. say that whether the hair - trigger response to faces is innate or learned , it represents a decisive evolutionary adaptation , one that dwarfs side effects like check Beelzebub in a crumpled tissue . “ The information faces convey is so rich — not just regarding another person ’s identity , but also their mental state , wellness and other factors , ” he said . “ It ’s extremely good for the brain to become sound at the task of look recognition and not to be very exacting in its cellular inclusion criteria . The cost of missing a look is gamy than the cost of declaring a nonface to be a face . ”
So before you tell Shinseungback Kimyonghun to get their head out of the cloud , consider this : they ’re just forwarding the project of human development — albeit with the assistant of a part of hand .
Facial Recognition
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