The Pictures of Dorian Gray: Murderabilia.
In Oscar Wilde's Novel: The Picture of Dorian Gray, the central character sold his soul so that the sins he committed, would not affect his own appearance, but would instead affect his Portrait. While he was able to maintain an appearance of Eternal Youth, the painting showed the true state of his Soul.
We realised that by combining Facial Expression Recognition Technology, Psychology and AI Art it would be possible to do something similar: Create a portrait of someone that revealed their inner soul for the world to see.
Facial Expression Recognition Software accurately analyses the Facial Expressions of people from photographs or video. In Murderabilia, We used it to analyse photographs of notorious killers to understand their basic emotions and to ascertain their personality traits.
We then converted the photographs into Artistic representations using AI Art software. As the Art Algorithm is perfectly repeatable and free from human bias, we were able to map the results of the Facial Expression results onto the Artistic interpretations with confidence. In this way, we were able to create unique works of Art that function as visual representations of the Person's soul.
But we also took it one step further. These artistic representations themselves were then evaluated by the Facial Expression Recognition Software, with startling results. The AI Art Algorithm exaggerated many of the subtle features of the photographs and made things that were previously invisible to the naked eye apparent. In so doing we have not only been able to massively expand the number of emotions the software can recognise, but we believe we've also potentially identified ways in which serious illness and injury can be recognised.
This has profound implications not just for the NFT space, but for scientific research, opening the door to facial recognition technology not just as means of identifying people, but as a means of medical diagnosis.
As an added bonus, and as a purely artistic exercise, we have also used AI Art software to convert the representations of the serial killers into different styles of Art. The process modified the physical appearance, age, race, and, in some cases, the genders of the individuals. The idea is to see whether, after removing all the different variables from the equation, would it still be possible on a purely instinctual level to identify or recognise that intangible negative quality that is their essence? Can we, to some extent, isolate and identify 'Evil' itself? It also explores the nature of identity and diversity.
It also raises questions of identity and diversity. Who would we be had we been born somewhere else, as someone else? Would our outcomes have been the same? How much of our personality is Nature, and how much Nurture? It also invites us to confront our prejudices, are we more or less likely to be convinced someone is innocent or guilty based on how someone's racial, ethnic and cultural heritage matches, or differs from our own?
The Pictures of Dorian Gray: Murderabilia will be available on Opensea on the 31st May 2022 at 0.10 ETH. There are just 1725 unique, non-generated images available.
