Tell Me the Truth

Tell me the Truth is an interactive artwork that consists of an intelligent mirror interface detecting presence. When approached, the mirror transforms the viewer’s reflection into that of Andy Warhol.

Hanging on a wall, the oval-shaped mirror, about 20 inches high, is cast over an LCD display and is large enough to reflect a viewer’s face and the upper body.

When a person approaches the mirror a video tracking system is activated, gradually turns the mirror transparent and displays the avatar.

The viewer’s face morphs in real time, replaced by a video image of the iconic artist, Andy Warhol, who reflects and mimics the viewer’s movements. When the gestures, faces or behavior of the viewer are out of range with the Andy Warhol character then the iconic star takes over and plays his own persona, staring straight ahead, occasionally reciting a short, typically Warholian sentences like: “That’s great”, “Wow, that’s amazing”, “I can make you a superstar”, ”Who is this?”, “You are fantastic”, and “Take a look at that, I’ve never seen that before!”. The mimicking resumes quickly, catching up with the viewer’s behavior.

Key words: Tangible Computing, Computer Vision, Facial tracking, Optics simulation,

Reflections of Simon’s face using the linear gradient mirror, which will let us determine the degree of transparency that a partial mirror will need. This will be quantitatively measured, and specified for a partially silvered mirror to be used for our prototype.

Demo of a Maya head model with blend shapes for facial animation being animated in Panda 3D while FaceAPI non-commercial version drives the xyz position and rotation of the head via OSC

Tell Me the Truth prototype articulating a Maya 3D face model running in Panda3D. FaceAPI communicates to Panda3D via OSC.

Demo