Artificial. Amygdala. Emotion.(AAE)
CG video (170 sec), 3d printed object, prints
2022
Installation on show at "Alive object" group exhibition in Oktava cluster (2022-2023). Curator: Alexey Shulgin.Emotions in the face are usually reflected in the form of a set of common facial expressions. The semantics of facial expressions is one of the most persistent over human history. Charles Darwin believed that emotions are evolutionarily inherent and common to all mankind, but very quickly this theory ceased to be relevant, and in science it is believed that facial expressions of emotion - are formed as part of culture and in the process of learning the behavioral traditions adopted in different cultures. Accordingly, in a culture dominated by digital technology, emotions must also undergo changes.
It is known that certain parts of the brain, in particular the amygdala, are responsible for the emergence of certain types of emotional experiences. The idea of the project is that, following technological development, our set of "emotions" that are inherent to humans as a species is also capable of evolving. This can happen in two ways - either by stimulating certain parts of the brain using a certain method. For example, it could be transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) or transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), which are already in use at the moment for emotion regulation and exploration. Or through human use of new technologies, let us say, some new forms of virtual and augmented reality, which in the future are capable of shaping a new type of emotion and the reflection of this emotion through facial facial expressions. Thus, it is possible to imagine that a new type of emotional experience can be synthesized in a technological way and previously such an emotional state could not and could not arise through the "natural" functioning of the brain.
Using in the project a speculative approach, research of scientific developments in neuropsychology, cognitive science and biology, as well as methods of machine learning of facial mimicry patterns, a new "technological" emotion is synthesized and is represented in the installation in several formats.
Installation view (represented in different formats - with and without 3D mask)
