AIMOTION
interactive installation that predicts emotions and visualizes them
Watch the user interaction with AIMOTION, on view @Goethe-Institut Athens, November 2022
CONCEPT
Smiling, frowning, or raising the eyebrows can show a lot about the way a person is feeling in the moment. But to what extent are these features enough for an AI to truly reveal and influence a person’s emotions?
AIMOTION is an interactive multimedia installation that invites participants to an intimate non-verbal dialogue with a machine capable of creating colours and visualizations based on the confidence level of the participants’ 7 basic emotions: fear, anger, happiness, sadness, disgust, surprise and neutral (calm).
AIMOTION installed @ Goethe-Institut Athens, photos above ©Vangelis Patsialos/Goethe-Institut Athens
EthicAI = LABS Forum @ Goethe Institut Athens, November 2022
Essentially a project aiming to research and reflect on issues related to ethics and AI, this program brought together, via an open call, young professionals and students from the fields of art, humanities, and technology based in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, and Romania.
We started in May with a 3 days in-person super-intensive ideathon in Sofia at Goethe-Institut Bulgarien. With the help of our three mentors Mihaela Constantinescu (Romania), Marinos Koutsomichalis (Greece), and Fatih Sinan Esen (Turkey) we, the 18 winners of the call, went from complete strangers to active team-members in less than a day!
By the end of the ideathon we were already 4 teams, and had pitched our ideas for interdisciplinary projects, that we would successfully develop during the next few months.
My team members, Davor Ljubenkov (AI and emerging tech), Tarik Spahic (software engineering student), Adin Alispahic (product design student) and I (interactive technologies, as you know), proposed an interactive multimedia installation that predicts that participant's emotions and does real time visualizations of them. We collaborated online and had a final in-person event, last month in beautiful Goethe-Institut Athen, where all of us showcased the diverse projects we worked on, and met with local artists and AI enthusiasts.
Below are some photos from the event ©Vangelis Patsialos/Goethe-Institut Athens:
Who are we?
ADIN ALISPAHIĆ
Student of product design in Academy of Fine Arts, Adin Alispahich (b. 1999) graduated two highschools in Zenica, one a Musical art highschool and the other catholic highschool “Sv. Pavao”. At the same time got a C 1.1 certificate in English language. After finishing highschool enrolled into a faculty of chemical engineering and after a year decided to choose another path, the path of “art”.
Instead of going towards music he started studying product design and history of arts on the Academy of fine arts in Sarajevo. Currently he is doing projects such as designing things from one time use plastics, making use of metal and wood combinations, designing architecture like parks and buildings (from buildings and sceneries for movies to galleries for locations in Sarajevo). He throughout studying history fine arts, music, and movies found a thin line connecting all of the moments from the past with today, his constant communication with philosophy students from Sarajevo drives him to design and make a better future. He is constantly evolving and learning how to apply the knowledge of the past with the unknown of tomorrow. With the dream of connecting the future with today in the most ethical way.
Instead of going towards music he started studying product design and history of arts on the Academy of fine arts in Sarajevo. Currently he is doing projects such as designing things from one time use plastics, making use of metal and wood combinations, designing architecture like parks and buildings (from buildings and sceneries for movies to galleries for locations in Sarajevo). He throughout studying history fine arts, music, and movies found a thin line connecting all of the moments from the past with today, his constant communication with philosophy students from Sarajevo drives him to design and make a better future. He is constantly evolving and learning how to apply the knowledge of the past with the unknown of tomorrow. With the dream of connecting the future with today in the most ethical way.
CRISTINA BODNĂRESCU
Cristina Bodnărescu is an interdisciplinary artist who experiments with and integrates new technologies in the visual and performative arts, being preoccupied with the body-nature-technology relationship, in a posthuman research framework. Recent projects involve creative programming and working with sensors for interactive installations addressed to both the public and performers, as well as works of experimental video art. As part of the Robots in Residence program (2021) she worked alongside the robot Nao, teaching her new skills. She handled the interaction design for the collaborative installation Out of The Box (2021) exhibited at the Festival of Lights Lyon and created A Blatant Schism (2021), a short film based on a book of personal unconventional poems with AR inserts. In her spare time she creates experimental ambient music as part of the duo Ethics Of Joy. She develops her interests for machine learning, AI, interactivity systems and the technological mediated body at the CINETIC and CESI research centres in Bucharest, where she is currently studying. Her personal works and in collaboration were exhibited nationally and internationally at Fête des Lumières Lyon, Simultan Festival, Amural Festival, Clujotronic, Blue Biennale.
DAVOR LJUBENKOV
Davor Ljubenkov is an Executive Manager for EU Public Policy Affairs regarding AI and Emerging Tech at Fujitsu Belgium, and also a Brussels based research fellow in the fields of ethical AI policymaking, innovation and technology management. His formal education is rooted in interdisciplinary computer science, mainly immersive virtual environments and data analytics. He obtained a double
MSc. in Data Science, Innovation and Entrepreneurship as a joint graduate at TU Eindhoven, KTH Stockholm and MIT Senseable City Lab, with a special focus on machine learning, neural networks and data visualization in the context of smart cities. His second joint MSc. in Digital Technology Management and Digital Communication Leadership was successfully achieved at Salzburg University, AAU Copenhagen, VUB (AI Experience Center) and UCLA (Ed&IS, Digital Cultures Lab). Main research area of this joint degree was ethical AI governance, public policy innovation and regulation of digital technologies. Most recently he was nominated as a candidate for a Fulbright Schuman pre-doctoral research on trustworthy AI at Harvard 2022/2023 pending a grant approval.
MSc. in Data Science, Innovation and Entrepreneurship as a joint graduate at TU Eindhoven, KTH Stockholm and MIT Senseable City Lab, with a special focus on machine learning, neural networks and data visualization in the context of smart cities. His second joint MSc. in Digital Technology Management and Digital Communication Leadership was successfully achieved at Salzburg University, AAU Copenhagen, VUB (AI Experience Center) and UCLA (Ed&IS, Digital Cultures Lab). Main research area of this joint degree was ethical AI governance, public policy innovation and regulation of digital technologies. Most recently he was nominated as a candidate for a Fulbright Schuman pre-doctoral research on trustworthy AI at Harvard 2022/2023 pending a grant approval.
TARIK SPAHIĆ
University of Sarajevo, Faculty of Traffic and Communications, Computer Science Current freshmen student, born in 2002, with different passions and many hobbies, one of which, putting thoughts and ideas into code which is also my current studying field. Since a young age, the love for computers and the curiosity for all the zeroes and ones that make programs work and function grew and thankfully it stayed that way for the rest of my life. The road of hobbies and passions was all over the place, from sewing to craftsmanship to painting and musical composition… I was trying many things and loving most of them, but priorities are fixed and goals exist to be achieved. A love for art and philosophy grew on me for the past 3 years, which lead to some artworks, poems and novels, which still need to be worked on and published, but compared to the previous Tarik from years ago, this time I kept pushing these passions. An interest for languages fuels parts of my intrigue and curiosity also, but achievements in that regard are minimal; German C2 certified @ Goethe Institut and fluent in English. Straight A student from the age of 6 till 19, on-the-rise amateur billiard player, weekend programmer and a coffee loving philosopher.
