KARL BROOME
Chameleon sets out to explore the scientific foundations of emotional
contagion. Utilising the six key emotions of disgust, happiness, anger,
neutrality, sadness and surprise originally identified by Paul Ekman,
the ‘face reading’ software attempts to identify the emotional
expressions of the participant. As the individual emotes, both their
facial expression, and potentially their ‘mind’ are ‘read’. How should
we understand these emotions in the context of the ‘emotional dialogue’
that Prototype 8 affords: where do they sit on the explanatory continuum
with biological explanations on one end and social on the other?
Sociological debates concerning emotions have been characterised with
the conceptualisations of emotions varying across a continuum with
‘organismic’ approaches on one end, ‘social-constructionist’ accounts on
the other, and ‘social-interactionist’ accounts somewhere in the middle.
At the ‘organismic’ end, we would find the likes of Charles Darwin, and
Paul Ekman, emphasising the innate, biological and ‘pre-cultural’ basis
of emotion and their expression – causes of emotion are wired in the
brain for instinct and survival. At the other end of the continuum we
find the ‘social constructionist’ accounts of emotion that have stressed
the ‘social’ nature of human emotions, understanding the emergence of
emotions in terms of their social, cultural, and historical variability,
meaning and experience, with the biological being understood as largely
irrelevant. For Social interactionists, emotions are recognised as
having biological substrates, but socially shaped and subject to
hierarchical manipulation. In contradistinction to constructionist
accounts, Interactionists recognise the importance of biological
process, and recognise the ‘embodied nature’ of emotions. Thinking
about ‘visitors’ experiences of interacting with the Chameleon project
provides an interesting opportunity to revisit some of these polarities
in sociological theorising. The social ecology of the space in which
works such as Chameleon are exhibited significantly impacts upon
affective experience of the work. Mundane material, physical and spatial
elements, and their affordances in terms of movement, interaction,
proximity, distance and visibility all play their part in terms of
interaction with the work, and the various forms of social interaction
taking place. Observing and interacting with people visiting the
exhibit today I became aware of people’s reluctance to stand in front of
the face -reading camera for any extensive period. Visitors appeared to
be much more comfortable in entering the dark room where the only source
of illumination was the relatively small amount of light produced by the
Pixy ‘screen’ – they appeared to be much more comfortable and interested
in watching Pixy from inside the room. I heard various people comment
upon how they felt Pixy to be the most interesting part of the work,
although not quite understanding how it worked. I feel that at this
testing/evaluation stage it takes a bit of active engagement and time to
really experience what it is that makes Chameleon so special- at the
moment visitors seem somewhat distracted by the presence of the computer
monitor and the face reading camera. Undoubtedly, with a few more tweaks
visitors will experience a collaborative work of an exceptional intensity.
