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A Bigger Smile

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A montage of 28 square images featuring people smiling. On inspection the figures appear to be composite or computer generated images as the faces are each distorted.

A Bigger Smile

Date: 2021
Artist: Dejana Draganić (British)
Dimensions:
5 min 50 sec
Medium: Digital film, StyleGAN, Vocodes
Object number: UAC 1043
DescriptionDejana studied BA Graphic Design at Camberwell College of Arts and also undertook a diploma at the UAL Creative Computing Institute. She says:
'I like to interrogate emotion recognition systems - also termed: Emotional AI. I am intrigued by the intricate technological process behind the scenes, the inaccuracies, and the inequalities.
Lauren Rhue’s study “Racial Influence on Automated Perceptions of Emotions” motivated me to understand racial disparities in commercial forms of Emotional AI. A BIGGER SMILE is a visual essay exploring the crude historical and contemporary nature of these systems.
By generating a fake smile using styleGAN and over 400 Google images of people smiling, I was able to compare and contrast the inferences computers make about real and fake smiles. A computer generated voice of David Attenborough provides an uncanny narration throughout.
My visual essay attempts to introduce and interrogate the nature of Emotional AI to a wider audience through the medium itself.'