Fureai Experience
Fureai is an emotion known in Japan which is felt when one feels an unexplained connection with someone they do not know. This project is meant to simulate the experience by visualizing a connection between two people. When the subjects are far away from the screen, patterns are displayed over their faces, to reflect the ambiguous identity of strangers. When a subject walks closer to the screen, a pattern is chosen for them and moved down to their chest, reveiling both their face and pattern at the same time. When two people partake in this experience, a line is drawn between them, visualizing their potential connection, and both their patterns are overlapped to create a visual of their collaboration. In order to inspire people to come closer to the screen, messages are displayed with hints about collaborations such as "Collaboration creates solutions", "Collaboration solves problems", and "Collaboration breeds creativity".
This experience is meant to be set up in public places such as train stations, airports, hallways of public buildings, etc. to spark conversation between pedestrians. It is meant to inspire them to interact with people in their surroundings and share a connection through a common experience.
Setup
The webcam sends a video feed to the Processing application which runs face recognition and places the patterns, lines, and type using openCV. It then sends the data to the projector which projects onto a rear-projection screen.
