Upon developing the concept for my final project, I have decided to incorporate a more communal element into my work as a means to utilise internet culture to physically bring people together and create tangible memories.
I will be using the same image classification process as described in my initial post but will create my own machine learning model using Google’s Teachable Machine. Doing this will enable the object classification to be more accurate and specific, ensuring a smoother interaction between users and the project. When gathering the sample images for this, I will make sure that the environment and framing is as close as possible to what the program will see on-site in order to ensure its accuracy while being open to the public.
In terms of the communal aspect, the project will require two phones (and therefore two people) to be detected by the program in order to generate the digital mirror. In making this choice, I hope to utilise the tendency we have to take photographs of ourselves as a means to bring us closer with our friends and loved ones, thus replacing an otherwise self-centred process with one that focuses on interpersonal connection. In order to compliment and emphasise this point, I will generating an ASCII-style digital mirror which fills the thresholded space with the text-heart emoticon ‘<3’. Not only does this link to the theme of interpersonal connection, it also refers back to the theme of internet culture which was ultimately the influence behind my project.