Digital Arts and Culture 2009

Rapid changes in science, technology and new media will lead to more sophisticated ideas about what it means to be human, in thought, body, emotional response and artistic expression. New relationships will form between humans, machines and animals with the human functioning as a networked resource that can be accessed globally over the internet.

This paper documents both the technical and theoretical development of the collaborative interactive new media video project “The Emotions (after Charles Darwin)” which explores some of the above concepts. “The Emotions” first tries to establish the existence of the universality of emotions at a biological level, as empirically measured and documented by the results of the control group (non-autistic subjects, as the goal is to document “normal”, i.e. universal emotional response) at the Brain Mind Institute in Switzerland. Secondly, it suggests the potential for subsequent futuristic misuse through genetic and or technological modification (demonstrated by the observer’s ability to interactively modify or transform a given emotion’s video stream at will).