Viewer’s movement and expressions are mimicked by an animal’s head which is overlaid on the viewer’s reflection. The resulting effect invites inquiry into issues of self-awareness, empathy and non-verbal communication.
A different animal appears every time a person walks in front of the mirror. The animals represent species from across the spectrum of domestication, from wild predators to domesticated species to animals who have evolved to coexist with human settlements, while remaining ‘wild’.
The animal mimics the viewer’s facial expressions, interspersing them with its own independent ones. One feels compelled to in turn enact those animal expressions, lip licking and snarling, fully inhabiting the role, following while being followed.
The images above show how the person looking in the mirror sees the animal image: as overlaid on their own reflection. For others, seeing this interaction from a different perspective, the animal head is offset, as in the video below. (The pictures were taken with the animal being offset for the viewer).
Made using
FaceTracker library from Jason Saragih (web.mac.com/jsaragih/FaceTracker/FaceTracker.html),
ofxFaceTracker addon by Kyle McDonald (github.com/kylemcdonald/ofxFaceTracker)
openFrameworks (openframeworks.cc/)
Unity3d (unity3d.com/)
Blender3d (blender.org/)
Background
Mirror neurons and on-verbal communication
Recently a neural mechanism has been discovered that explains how we get experiential insight of other minds. Mirror neurons activate when we perform an action as well as when we watch someone perform an action, and thus have been implicated in imitation learning. In addition to acting on the motor centers, mirror neurons have been theorized to play a role in ‘theory of mind’ concepts such as emotional recognition or contagion. Emotional contagion is based on interpreting the emotional state of another being expressed through physical features. Emotions (such as fear or sadness) have typical facial characteristics, and the mirror neurons theory would consider the neurons as ‘mapping’ the facial features of another being onto the respective areas in our own brain. Evolutionary theory tells us that such direct mapping would be beneficial as it could help us perceive danger or threat more directly and quickly. More complex evolutionary theories link mirror neurons to the appearance of cooperative behavior or emotions such as empathy and compassion.
The yet unanswered question is to what extent do mirror neurons might function between humans and animals, and do they function for more complex behaviors and emotions. We do know that there is reciprocal behavior between different animal species, and a certain amount of mind modeling. Studies of the predator-pray relationships tell us that survival in those roles depends on successful inserting of oneself into the mind of the hunter or the hunted, even to the point of mimicking its behavior. “It was our ancestors’ skill at not only analyzing and imitating the nature of a given animal, but identifying with it, that enabled them to flourish in dangerous environments, both physically and psychically.” writes John Vaillant in The Tiger. The ability to understand and communicate with other species is also apparent in our relationships with domesticated animals that rely on cooperation and emotional bonding. Communication with animals in particular relies on a non-linguistic, body-based, instinctive and emotional aspect of expression. Social psychology studies have demonstrated that imitation and mimicry are pervasive, automatic, and facilitate empathy. The neural mirroring suggests that those mimicry exchanges are a bridge to inhabiting the other’s mind — and to the in-depth understanding of each other.
Mask: the provisional face
Throughout the world animal masks are used for their expressive and symbolic power – both ritually and in various theatre traditions. Often the mask is regarded as an instrument of revelation, giving form to the invisible. Many African tribes believe that the animal masks can help them communicate with the spirits who live in forests or open savannas. The neural mirroring mechanism suggests that these rituals might be far more than simply a symbolic performance — they are actually an embodied simulation of other creatures.
Symbolism is encoded into the designs of the masks to inform the spectators about the role and its dominant characteristics. These designs often exaggerate facial expressions. For example The Senoufo people of the Ivory Coast represent tranquility by making masks with eyes half-shut and lines drawn near the mouth, and the Grebo of the Ivory Coast carve masks with round eyes to represent alertness and anger.
Nicola Savarese in “A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology: The Secret Art of The Performer” discusses the ‘facial gestures’ expressive of emotional states that we share with animals. “The expression ‘to show one’s teeth’ is so rich in meaning that it has passed from physiology to proverb”, he writes and notes how we often intentionally ‘perform’ these facial gestures in order to communicate and thus turn our face into a mask: “The mask becomes a face and the face a mask. It is not the psychology of feelings but anatomy of forms which is being dealt with here.”
Mirrors, perception and the amalgamation of the physical and virtual
Part of my interest in this project is the combination of the virtual and physical world — inserting a layer of imagination into a world we know. The chain of causes and effects remains in place, although slightly augmented. The familiar is transformed into the uncanny, prompting us to see the mechanics of perception, interaction, and relationships with others anew. “In a sense, mirrors are the best ‘virtual reality’ system that we can build,” said Marco Bertamini of the University of Liverpool. “The object ‘inside’ the mirror is virtual, but as far as our eyes are concerned it exists as much as any other object.” Dr. Bertamini and his colleagues have also studied what people believe about the nature of mirrors and mirror images, and have found nearly everybody to be shockingly off the mark. (For example, no matter how far we stand from the mirror, our face in the mirror is always exactly half the size of our face: the mirror is always halfway between our physical selves and our projected selves in the virtual world inside the mirror, and so the captured image in the mirror is half our true size.)
To scientists, the simultaneous simplicity and complexity of mirrors make them powerful tools for exploring questions about perception and cognition in humans and other neuronally gifted species, and how the brain interprets and acts upon the great tides of sensory information from the external world. They are using mirrors to study how the brain decides what is self and what is other, how it judges distances and trajectories of objects, and how it reconstructs the richly three-dimensional quality of the outside world from what is essentially a two-dimensional snapshot taken by the retina’s flat sheet of receptor cells.
– from New York Times
Title
Konstanty Ciołkowski, a Soviet Russian rocket scientist, pioneer of cosmonautics, writer and philosopher used the phrase “all the universe is full of the lives of perfect creatures” in his “The Cosmic Philosophy” whose main idea is arriving at the absence of suffering for all the living beings in the Cosmos, for all the Universe.
All the Universe is Full of the Lives of Perfect Creatures
Viewer’s movement and expressions are mimicked by an animal’s head which is overlaid on the viewer’s reflection. The resulting effect invites inquiry into issues of self-awareness, empathy and non-verbal communication.
A different animal appears every time a person walks in front of the mirror. The animals represent species from across the spectrum of domestication, from wild predators to domesticated species to animals who have evolved to coexist with human settlements, while remaining ‘wild’.
The animal mimics the viewer’s facial expressions, interspersing them with its own independent ones. One feels compelled to in turn enact those animal expressions, lip licking and snarling, fully inhabiting the role, following while being followed.
The images above show how the person looking in the mirror sees the animal image: as overlaid on their own reflection. For others, seeing this interaction from a different perspective, the animal head is offset, as in the video below. (The pictures were taken with the animal being offset for the viewer).
Made using
FaceTracker library from Jason Saragih (web.mac.com/jsaragih/FaceTracker/FaceTracker.html),
ofxFaceTracker addon by Kyle McDonald (github.com/kylemcdonald/ofxFaceTracker)
openFrameworks (openframeworks.cc/)
Unity3d (unity3d.com/)
Blender3d (blender.org/)
Background
Mirror neurons and on-verbal communication
Recently a neural mechanism has been discovered that explains how we get experiential insight of other minds. Mirror neurons activate when we perform an action as well as when we watch someone perform an action, and thus have been implicated in imitation learning. In addition to acting on the motor centers, mirror neurons have been theorized to play a role in ‘theory of mind’ concepts such as emotional recognition or contagion. Emotional contagion is based on interpreting the emotional state of another being expressed through physical features. Emotions (such as fear or sadness) have typical facial characteristics, and the mirror neurons theory would consider the neurons as ‘mapping’ the facial features of another being onto the respective areas in our own brain. Evolutionary theory tells us that such direct mapping would be beneficial as it could help us perceive danger or threat more directly and quickly. More complex evolutionary theories link mirror neurons to the appearance of cooperative behavior or emotions such as empathy and compassion.
The yet unanswered question is to what extent do mirror neurons might function between humans and animals, and do they function for more complex behaviors and emotions. We do know that there is reciprocal behavior between different animal species, and a certain amount of mind modeling. Studies of the predator-pray relationships tell us that survival in those roles depends on successful inserting of oneself into the mind of the hunter or the hunted, even to the point of mimicking its behavior. “It was our ancestors’ skill at not only analyzing and imitating the nature of a given animal, but identifying with it, that enabled them to flourish in dangerous environments, both physically and psychically.” writes John Vaillant in The Tiger. The ability to understand and communicate with other species is also apparent in our relationships with domesticated animals that rely on cooperation and emotional bonding. Communication with animals in particular relies on a non-linguistic, body-based, instinctive and emotional aspect of expression. Social psychology studies have demonstrated that imitation and mimicry are pervasive, automatic, and facilitate empathy. The neural mirroring suggests that those mimicry exchanges are a bridge to inhabiting the other’s mind — and to the in-depth understanding of each other.
Mask: the provisional face
Throughout the world animal masks are used for their expressive and symbolic power – both ritually and in various theatre traditions. Often the mask is regarded as an instrument of revelation, giving form to the invisible. Many African tribes believe that the animal masks can help them communicate with the spirits who live in forests or open savannas. The neural mirroring mechanism suggests that these rituals might be far more than simply a symbolic performance — they are actually an embodied simulation of other creatures.
Symbolism is encoded into the designs of the masks to inform the spectators about the role and its dominant characteristics. These designs often exaggerate facial expressions. For example The Senoufo people of the Ivory Coast represent tranquility by making masks with eyes half-shut and lines drawn near the mouth, and the Grebo of the Ivory Coast carve masks with round eyes to represent alertness and anger.
Nicola Savarese in “A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology: The Secret Art of The Performer” discusses the ‘facial gestures’ expressive of emotional states that we share with animals. “The expression ‘to show one’s teeth’ is so rich in meaning that it has passed from physiology to proverb”, he writes and notes how we often intentionally ‘perform’ these facial gestures in order to communicate and thus turn our face into a mask: “The mask becomes a face and the face a mask. It is not the psychology of feelings but anatomy of forms which is being dealt with here.”
Mirrors, perception and the amalgamation of the physical and virtual
Part of my interest in this project is the combination of the virtual and physical world — inserting a layer of imagination into a world we know. The chain of causes and effects remains in place, although slightly augmented. The familiar is transformed into the uncanny, prompting us to see the mechanics of perception, interaction, and relationships with others anew. “In a sense, mirrors are the best ‘virtual reality’ system that we can build,” said Marco Bertamini of the University of Liverpool. “The object ‘inside’ the mirror is virtual, but as far as our eyes are concerned it exists as much as any other object.” Dr. Bertamini and his colleagues have also studied what people believe about the nature of mirrors and mirror images, and have found nearly everybody to be shockingly off the mark. (For example, no matter how far we stand from the mirror, our face in the mirror is always exactly half the size of our face: the mirror is always halfway between our physical selves and our projected selves in the virtual world inside the mirror, and so the captured image in the mirror is half our true size.)
To scientists, the simultaneous simplicity and complexity of mirrors make them powerful tools for exploring questions about perception and cognition in humans and other neuronally gifted species, and how the brain interprets and acts upon the great tides of sensory information from the external world. They are using mirrors to study how the brain decides what is self and what is other, how it judges distances and trajectories of objects, and how it reconstructs the richly three-dimensional quality of the outside world from what is essentially a two-dimensional snapshot taken by the retina’s flat sheet of receptor cells.
– from New York Times
Title
Konstanty Ciołkowski, a Soviet Russian rocket scientist, pioneer of cosmonautics, writer and philosopher used the phrase “all the universe is full of the lives of perfect creatures” in his “The Cosmic Philosophy” whose main idea is arriving at the absence of suffering for all the living beings in the Cosmos, for all the Universe.