Faceshopping

Faceshopping is an instagram filter that recreates SOPHIE's music video for Faceshopping in augmented reality. The music video covers themes of body dysmorphia especially with the lens of SOPHIE being a transgender individual. By turning the camera at the user, I aim to put the user in SOPHIE's place. The filter was presented in Berlin, Germany at "MANIFEST:IO – The Symposium for New Media & Electronic Art."

Conception

SOPHIE's Faceshopping music video has stuck with me ever since I saw it. It contains visuals of SOPHIE's face being distorted while loud abrasive hyperpop/PC-music blares through. For this project, I wanted people to be able to experience these distortions and music on their face. I looked into a lot of AR platforms like Unity, Vuforia or Styly but realized Meta had created a pretty good solution for face filters.

Technical Implementation

I imported the model of the face that Meta provides for the filter into Cinema4D. I added a PoseMorph tag to it and then set up keyframes with 6 different distortions. I exported this model into Meta Spark Studio. I used the frequency splitter node in Spark AR's node graph then and passed SOPHIE"s Faceshopping through it. The middle frequencies were mapped to the intensity of the light and the back wall. The high frequencies were mapped to the direction and movement of the light. I wrote a simple javascript script after that to animate and cycle through all the distortions periodically and in a loop.

Exhibition

The filter was part of TimeLab's, a transmedia laboratory for artistic research in Berlin, MANIFEST:IO Symposium for New Media and Electronic Art in Berlin. I printed the poster pictured above and hung it around the venue. The exhibition occurred at Alte Muenze, a popular night club and an art venue in Berlin.