What if Cities Could Sense and Respond to Our Emotions?

The Emoting City installation at the 2019 Shenzhen Biennale explores the ambient potential of emotion sensing AI to perceive human emotion states and express artificial empathy through light and motion

The Emoting City. Photo Credit:©Dalia Tondo (Shared with permission of Shenzhen Biennale)

What if cities acquire the ability sense and elicit human emotions?

This project imagines a futuristic scenario where the city becomes an emotional machine. A machine created from elements that see, feel, and even reconfigure their own function in relation to human emotions. Throughout history, emotional intelligence has differentiated humans from machines. While humans have an innate ability to spot subtle social cues and modify behavior accordingly, machine systems are deterministic and indifferent to human feelings; programmed to objective, limit, or control human behavior in a way that contributes to skepticism around their use.

“The Emoting City ‘’ conceptual diagram depicting applications and components across 3 layers: artificial, environmental, and human

The ubiquity of such systems contributes to new found economic and social efficiencies across the world. However, the imposing effect of routine and consumption also alienates people from their innate behaviors. What if the built environment could “see” and “feel” emotions to evoke new forms of authentic urban spectacle, desire and play?

The advancement of emotion-based computer vision and AI technologies will soon make this a reality. “The Emoting City” embodies these technologies physical form to demonstrate on a alternate future whereby Human-AI interaction goes beyond surveillance systems and the anthropomorphic designs of social robotics, towards transparent interfaces which are conducive to new levels of interactivity and self-insight.

Comprised of a network of responsive architectural components, the resulting installation interprets emotions from the facial expressions of occupants as new environmental factors. Personal emotions are then manifested through shifting color and form as corollaries to a spectrum of psychological states, as either reinforcement or intervention.

Layered (transparency and reflection) smart mirror in use. Self-empathy via facial tracking and color change. Infinity mirror effect is achieved through the superposition of two mirrors, whereby one-way film is applied to the front mirror, which creates a series of smaller and smaller reflections which recede to infinity

At the meta-scale, algorithms compute a group mood index over time from individual expression data. Ultimately, the user experience is one of personal attention as well as community building and spectacle. It encourages the deliberate collaboration between visitors to trigger novel responses and urban situations.

Distributed Cyberception network. [A] Local server. [B] Communication between program instances [C] data dashboard and visualization

Situated within the active Futian Railway Station, “The Emoting City” assigns an empathetic role to large-scale public space, and demonstrates the potential of connecting the architecture of the human mind with that of the city. Promoting an emotion-aware Eyes of the City, this project advocates for the responsible use of machine vision to celebrate the authentic desires of inhabitants, and to mitigate the alienating effects of ubiquitous technology.

The Emoting City. Photo Credit:©Prospekt (Shared with permission of Shenzhen Biennale)

C R E D I T S

The Emoting City (2019) Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism / Architecture (UABB) “Eyes of the City” Section

By Jie Zhang, Sayjel Vijay Patel, Raffi Tchakerian

Collaborators: Renata Lemos Morais, Alhan Ahmed, Andrei Baluta, Nikhilesh Mohan

Special Thanks: Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation