Project #6: Experimental Camera

Description

In this project, I designed a camera with a face-tracking filter to address the phenomena that Chinese AI picture editing tools automatically brightens the skin of the user unless otherwise manually adjusted. This could mislead the user and set biased racial opinions as the majority user of these applications are the younger generations in China. The camera I created has a semi-transparent mask covering the user's face, mimicking the way facial-whitening filters alter the skin color. The mask is semi-transparent as it represents the psychological racial border in people's minds, in the sense that it is a border, yet it is not a literal border. The mask covers the entire face, including the eyes and mouth, meaning how people can be blinded by these notions and unable to see through the racial border in their hearts. The word "FILTER" floats around the user's head, acting as a reminder of the idea I want to communicate. Most importantly, the color of the mask and the font can change from white to black by clicking the mouse to raise more thinking surrounding skin color and race. This project is meaningful to me because it is my first attempt of coding with facial tracking and the 3D aspect through JavaScript and as a successful attempt to implement my newly learned skill to the subject of work I am interested in.

Technical components that I explored in this project:

- Arrays

- createCapture();

- PostNet(ML5) Face Tracking

- WEBGL

Design Process

This project stems from my personal experience of living both in China and the US. China has long been a monoethnic country, in fact, it is the largest predominantly monoethnic country in the world with 91.6% of its population Han Chinese. Racism is a considerably new concept for Chinese, yet it is slowly but surely coming into sight of Chinese as China becomes more international and its accessibility to other countries increases. To most Chinese, who might have never encountered any people other than Chinese, this is a realm that remains unknown and lacks awareness. With the rise of Tiktok and Douyin(Chinese version of Tiktok created by the same company), new technologies such as AI facial recognition and AI facial beautifying tools become prevailing among the younger generations in China. However, skin-whitening seems to be a feature embedded in almost all of the automatic one-touch facial beautifying tools and most of the filters unless otherwise manually adjusted. No matter the race of the user, no matter what the original intention for the facial adjustment is, if the image is to be automatically edited by AI, the skin color of the image will most likely be lightened.

The notion of beauty in China is greatly influenced by both historical reason and the influence of western media. For thousands of years, China remained an agricultural country where the rich stayed inside, and the poor worked in farmlands growing crops. The different working environments created a difference in skin color(especially for Asians as their skin color can vary dramatically depending on sun exposure). Light skin color has become a sign of rich people, thus it is more preferred by most Chinese. The transition from an agricultural country to an industrialized country only lasted a few decades, and the traditional opinion of skin color still remains in the mind of the majority.

Another reason stemmed from WWII when western countries invaded China. The introduction of western media and the influence of colonies set the ground stone for China's foreign culture notion, predominantly white people during that period. It was not until relatively recently did artists with darker skin emerge into Chinese popular culture. Thus under the influence of popular culture, lighter skin color is further preferred over dark skin. However, this notion is gradually changing mostly due to hip-hop, rap, and certain dance cultures that are becoming widely favored by the younger generation in China.