{"id":397,"date":"2023-04-25T18:54:21","date_gmt":"2023-04-25T18:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistbot.com\/blog\/?p=397"},"modified":"2026-04-16T00:01:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T00:01:21","slug":"trying-to-imagine-interactive-art-emotion-detection-using-p5-js-and-ml5-js","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zeitgeistbot.com\/blog\/trying-to-imagine-interactive-art-emotion-detection-using-p5-js-and-ml5-js\/","title":{"rendered":"Trying to imagine: An Interactive AI Artwork That Only Exists When You\u2019re Not Looking"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Trying to Imagine<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

*On a piece that blooms in your absence*<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a long tradition in art of demanding attention. The canvas, the sculpture, the installation all of them say, in one register or another: *look at me*<\/em>. The artist makes something. The viewer brings their gaze. That exchange is so fundamental to how we think about art that it rarely gets questioned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Trying to Imagine*<\/em> questions it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What It Does<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The piece uses eye tracking. When you look at it directly, with open eyes, your gaze registered and held it remains still. Or quiet. Or itself, in whatever form it has settled into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The moment you look away, flowers appear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not dramatically. Not as a reward for inattention. They simply begin to arrive petals and stems building a composition that exists entirely in your peripheral vision, or behind your closed eyes, or in the space between glances. The piece blooms when it is unwatched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you turn back, you are looking at something that changed while you weren’t there. Something you missed. Something that happened specifically because you stopped looking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Inversion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In physics, the observer effect describes how the act of measurement disturbs the system being measured. You cannot observe something without changing it. Here, the inversion is clean: it is the *absence*<\/em> of observation that releases the piece into its fullest expression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not a technical trick. It is a conceptual position about the relationship between attention and becoming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We spend enormous energy as a culture on being seen. On documenting presence, on performing for the gaze, on constructing selves that hold together under observation. *Trying to Imagine*<\/em> gently proposes that the most interesting things happen when the gaze is gone. That presence your presence, the viewer’s presence is in some sense the constraint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The work needs you to leave, at least briefly, to become what it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Title<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

*Trying to Imagine*<\/em> is named for what it makes you do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When your eyes are closed, or averted, you are trying to picture what the piece is becoming. You cannot see it. You know it is changing. You imagine the petals arriving, the composition shifting, the space filling with something you chose by looking away, to allow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The title makes the viewer the subject. Not the flowers. Not the system. You, trying to imagine. The piece names your experience from inside it, and in doing so, implicates you in what you missed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What It Looks Like<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The flowers themselves are muted, restrained. Dusty pink, olive, navy, taupe botanical without being decorative, organic without being pretty in the easy sense. The palette refuses to announce itself. The petals arrive with the quiet matter-of-factness of something that was always going to happen, that didn’t need your attention to warrant existing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the right choice. If the flowers were spectacular vivid, intricate, demanding in their own right the piece would become a reward system. Look away, receive beauty. That is not what this is. The flowers are simply what the piece does when left alone. Their restraint is the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Being Unwatched<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There is something that happens in rooms when people leave them. A quality of air, of settling. The sense that the space is doing something, has permission to do something, that it couldn’t do while occupied. Anyone who has sat in an empty church, or returned to a room where something significant once happened, knows this without being able to name it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Trying to Imagine*<\/em> makes that quality visible. The room the piece has an inner life that your presence suppresses and your absence releases. This is not a metaphor. It is a mechanism. And the mechanism makes the metaphor true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Moment of Return<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The most interesting moment in the piece is not when you look away. It is when you turn back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You are looking at something that changed while you were gone. You do not know exactly when the flowers arrived, or how the composition shifted, or what happened in the interval of your absence. You know only that something did happen, and that you caused it by not watching, and that the version you are now looking at is shaped by your inattention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every return is a confrontation with what you missed. And you missed it because you were there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What It Asks<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Most interactive art asks the viewer to do something: touch, move, speak, respond. The interaction is additive. You bring your action and the piece amplifies or transforms it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Trying to Imagine*<\/em> asks you to stop. To withdraw. To trust that the piece will do something with your absence worth returning to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is a different kind of trust. And it requires a different kind of viewer one willing to give up control over the moment, to allow the work its privacy, to be a little humble about the assumption that their attention is what makes things happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The piece does its best work when you step back. That is not a criticism of the viewer. It is an invitation to a different relationship with looking one where withholding the gaze is itself an act of generosity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/foIWl3gG1pc”\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the Gallery<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Installed in a darkened room, projected large, *Trying to Imagine*<\/em> becomes something a person inhabits rather than views. You watch. You wait. You look away and in that moment of practiced inattention, you give the piece permission to become itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You come back to flowers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You will never see them arrive. Only where they’ve been.<\/p>\n\n\n\nView Artwork<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trying to Imagine *On a piece that blooms in your absence* There is a long tradition in art of demanding attention. The canvas, the sculpture, the installation all…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":398,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13,123,117,114,121,111,115,122,30,25,99,98,113,112,29,116,120,118,119],"class_list":["post-397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-art","tag-art-and-technology","tag-color","tag-creative-coding","tag-emotion-detection","tag-facial-expressions","tag-gpt","tag-immersive-experience","tag-interactive-art","tag-jon-montenegro","tag-machine-learning","tag-ml5-js-2","tag-morphing","tag-openai","tag-p5-js","tag-pattern","tag-randomness","tag-shape","tag-viewer-engagement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zeitgeistbot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zeitgeistbot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zeitgeistbot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zeitgeistbot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zeitgeistbot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.zeitgeistbot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":492,"href":"http:\/\/www.zeitgeistbot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions\/492"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zeitgeistbot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zeitgeistbot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zeitgeistbot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zeitgeistbot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}