Art Center College of Design and CalTech (both here in Pasadena, CA) teamed up and created "NEURO", a small but amazing exhibit I visited this weekend.

In "Body Electric" you enter a small, darkened room and you see a rough body image of yourself in two large screens. It looks something like a heat sensor pattern, but the colors change occasionally. There are strange sounds that are attached to your movements and at some point a floating diamond begin to both follow and react to your motions. By positioning yourself correctly in relation to the diamond in 3 dimensions, you are able to destroy it with a shattering sound. It is less gamelike and more immersive, dancelike than it sounds.

The exhibit "Cheese" uses several screens of actresses who are told to smile convincingly into a camera for upwards of an hour and a half. A computer is monitering their facial dynamics and a light bar beside each screen indicates how sincere the computer believes each face is. It is absolutely fascinating to watch and see what the machine is using to judge. There are time when the frozen boredom in the smile is completely obvious to a human, only to have the machine give it a high score. As the women take breaks and stretch, you see the machine diminish their credibility.

Another exhibit was something inexplicable involving a tank of real fish, a compter generated tank of fish on a wall and tracking software.

Well worth seeing if you are near Pasadena in June.

Mix Together Artists and Scientists...