VIBRISSAE
Face filters in Augmented Reality 2021
vi·bris·sae /vai ‘brise/ Long stiff hairs growing around the mouth or elsewhere on the face of many mammals, used as organs of touch; whiskers.
Vibrissae is a project that explores the tactile potential of the face by adding
prostheses similar to vibrissae in augmented reality.
By using facial signals and expressions such as blinking, frowning and frowns to interact
with these prostheses, the experiment consists of manipulating one’s own face in
order to experience a kind of augmented face.
The challenge of this project is to divert the dual social function of the face (identification
function and communication function) to give it other functions borrowed from
animal forms of perception. How to make the face tactile by adding vibrissae (tactile
reception organs used by certain animals)? How can one augment one’s face by adding
non-human perceptions, or even by experimenting with forms of animal culture?
Vibrissae is a form of experimentation and acceptance of forms of mutation and
hybridisation. By accepting to develop extra-human characteristics by being potentially
denatured from one’s own identity, this project tries to imagine potentialities of
increasing human identity, while questioning our relationship to abnormality and the
acceptance of what is out of the norm.
Created for The Overkill Festival, "Collective Masquerade" (Enschede, Netherlands) 2021