Presentation for Science Acts, 8th of May 2014, Aa-church in Groningen How do we read emotions? How do we use facial movements to communicate? Barbara Nordhjem is doing research in the field of Cognitive Neuroscience. She is studying visual perception and is investigating these questions. She made the installation (e)motion in collaboration with mediaartist Jan Klug and professor of Neuromechanics Bert Otten and will explain how the installation works and was created between art and science.

1. (e)motion
A collaboration between Jan Klug, Barbara Nordhjem, Bert Otten and Pavlov E-lab
Photo: René Passet

5. Brain & body
connected

7. Cognition
Action
Perception
Hurley, 1998
Classical sandwich model

8. Ideomotor theory = idea + motor
Kunde, Koch, & Hoffmann, 2004
William James, 1890

9. Prinz, 1997
Iacoboni &
Dapretto, 2006

10. You think with your face

11. When you smile, you are faster
recognizing positive words

12. If you can’t move your face, you
are slower reading emotions
Niedenthal et al., 2007; Oberman, Winkielman, &
Ramachandran, 2007

13. Emotion

14. There are 43 muscles in the face

15. Six basic
emotions
Facial Action Coding System (FACS); a catalog of action
units (Ekman & Friesen, 1976)

16. Darwin - Drawings by mr. Wood (1872)

17. A micro-expression is a brief
involuntary facial expression
https://mazuzu.com/microexpressions/

18. You can’t hide micro-expressions,
they leak out within less that one
fifth of a second
I did not have sex with that man
I did not have sex with that woman
I have never used performance enhancing drugs

19. Each emotion is characterized
by movement
Bassili (1979)

20. Dynamic faces in the
brain

21. Social chameleons

22. The process

24. Photo: Bert Otten
Jan coding with MaxMSP & OpenFrameworks

26. Tracking movement

29. The face is analyzed in six segments

31. The lines show motion vectors

32. The (e)motion tracker detects
changes in the video
This method is called optical flow

34. Thank you