Processing, After Effects, Audio
Emotion Express is a multimedia data visualisation.
Inspiration
Inspired by Mimi Ọnụọha’s talk at Eyeo Festival ‘How we became machine readable’ (2017) which debunks traditional realist notions of the detached objective researcher and passive participant. I invited coproduction of the data based on my participant’s narrative and organised around categories informed by my own research. Further inspiration came from ‘Dear Data’ a project designed to speculate about new ways of collecting and and visualising data that break with realist tradition.
process_making
I used Processing, an open-source coding platform, to input, visualise and express the coproduced data as series of generative animations collated and woven into a video using After Effects and Premiere Pro. I used Audition to produce recordings of station soundscapes punctuated by my own narrative to bring this theme to life and add an element of tongue in cheek social commentary.
process_theory
This project reflects on traditional realist methods of collecting and visualising data that seek to disguise the link between perception and memory through appeals to objectivity. It juxtaposes this with relativist methodologies like narrative sharing through appeals to subjectivity. In his book ‘The New Dark Age’ James Bridle considers the cultural shift from realism towards relativism when humanity relies too heavily on the assumption that we can compute our way to certainty. Software has turned every aspect of our lives into data that can be collected, shared and compared to inform decisions in a misplaced attempt to achieve a god’s eye view, even human emotion.
