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you
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it was basically five of us on skype all
around the country and it's like what
are you guys into it was like Aaron you
you're into like facial recognition
software
Lauren was into behavior modification
James is into motion capture and I think
we threw it out there like do you guys
like Michael Jackson it was like hell
yeah
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project is called face dance it's
basically a program that allows you to
control a projected image using only
facial expressions you smile Michael
does a spin move you blink with both
eyes and you know he does really like
friend he grabs his crotch
we get this to work then we'll see if
it's funny if it's interesting if it's
fun to perform is it fun to watch so I
think our mission was to get a prototype
it starts with the face detection
software which uses a depth sensor to
track someone's face and it gets a lot
of really nuanced data about different
kinds of gestures of their faces making
in real-time that gets sent to an
application written in unity which is
responsible for all the graphics and
sound someone had the idea to do motion
capture and it was like that way we can
have this like really clean but also
sort of abstract version of Michael and
you have the ability to like create this
freestyle dance routine
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you click David Barnett in a motion
capture suit with the little balls on
and everything and basically capture as
many Michael Jackson dance moves as we
could in a given amount of time the
concept being that we have a library of
Michael Jackson moves we felt like we
were in the future we're like sitting in
this high-rise office in Soho New York
and directing this basement motion
capture session in Soho London and all
we could see from them was the screen
capture from them so basically this
program has been trained to look at my
face
so as I'm moving it's tracking my
gestures and so those impulses are we
what we send to unity to trigger dance
moves mouth open trigger one yeah so
when you watch this dance it's not just
about watching someone do a cool dance
it's about the knowledge that there's an
interaction taking place that it's being
performed in this cool funny way and
seeing the relationship between
somebody's face moving and the dance
happening
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just the ability to like play around
with new technology have an idea be able
to test it out is so important because
through this process we have a million
other ideas theoretically this could
allow someone who is completely
immobilized to express themselves to run
to dance to jump to leap physical motion
can actually express something they're
no longer locked in a body they can
dance with their face
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