New Media

Before Going Out

By Mengqiao Liu

Description

I often wonder what I look like in the eyes of others. My friends have completely different evaluations of me as if they don’t know the same person. But every evaluation is me, or rather, they constitute me. On a day, when I meet different people, my words and actions will change, sometimes even unconsciously. This not only makes me curious, but every day before going out, I look forward to what I am today and what kind of person I will become.

This project uses Touch Designer to identify the audience’s faces, distinguishing between faces and backgrounds through color and line thickness. The reason for using lines is because I don’t want the recognition of the audience’s faces to be too realistic and specific. Imagine, it’s actually difficult to see your appearance (if you don’t always look in the mirror) throughout the day. The lines accurately depict the outline but blur the facial features, which in my understanding is in line with people’s impressions of their appearance. Combining the recognized face with another photo of a Beijing opera facial makeup, I generated a unique mask for the audience through Stable Diffusion.

Resources and References