Parsons School of Design
BFA Communication Design
Thesis 2018

Parsons School of Design
BFA Communication Design
Thesis 2018

There is an increasingly thin line separating devices and their users. We see this through voice activated interfaces, facial recognition softwares, and social media. As sharing emotional responses through technology accelerates technology gains further ubiquity, resulting in a near seamlessness between users and emotions. My thesis centers around two emerging, existential questions: where is the line between emotion and technology? between the user and artifice?

To showcase this line, I am creating a website that demonstrates the aforementioned relationship with the use of facial recognition and cinema. The site works by generating movie scenes and clips based on the user’s current emotional state, once being read by the facial recognition software. Given that technology’s assessment of emotional states is based on binary distinctions, the more familiar with the patterns of emotion the site becomes, the more the outcomes become stuck in a loop. As a result, the outcome generated forms a cyclical pattern that reacts based on assumption of the users emotions based on previous data rather than an accurate representation of their current state.

This project takes a dystopian view on the rapid pace of technological development. In doing so, it presents an alternative perspective
to the otherwise technophilic Silicon Valley ideals and motives. It challenges the idea of development for development’s sake—questioning use and underlining the possibility of technology creating new dependencies rather than solving preexisting problems. Essentially, the culmination of these ideas lead to existential questions: where is the line between the user and artifice? Can we set it? How? Where?

Maxine Joy Almendra

Daniela Al-Saleh

Amon Dario Appelt

Shruti Ashok

Whitney Badge

Jaire Berkel

Ingrid Bonetti

Victoria Boyd

Madison Bozinoff

Malulani Bria

Kaylin Brown

Rachel Brownjohn

Olive Burd

Germán Castellanos Reyes

Madeline Cericola

Vicky Chau

Amber Chen

Victor Chen

Wendy Ching

Connie Chu

Channon Chung

Leonardo Cilmi

Emma T. Conway

Nicole Corso

Qamile Dani

Magdalena de la Torre Suárez

Amanda Ericson

Dan Feldman

Anna Feng

Natalia Flores

Peter Frasco

Lucia Garza

Mariana Gaviria

Mikey Hefez

Adrianna Hinsey

Avinash Hirdaramani

Marielle Holland

Grace Hong

Surkho Shane Hong

Pauline Hotelier

Dylan Hughes

Jiyoung Hwang

Sonali Jain

Andrea S. Jassir

Christina Jenkins

Maria Jessica

Erin Johnston

Javarius Jones

Yea Ji Jung

Rachel Kahn

Anastasia Kharchenko

Jonathan Haojaq Kho

Alexa Kim

Cindy Dawon Kim

Sang Dennis Kim

Somin Kim

Yoonji Kim

Kyungmin Ko

Sidney Law

Kevin Lee

Jane Lee

Matheus Dal Santo Lewis Sage Smith

Kristiana Marcon

Hannah Marshall

Kruti Mehta

Gabriel Mester

Charlotte Miller

Mintra Morrison

Tamir Moses

Kaisha Murzamadiyeva

Thomas Nghia Nguyen

Lanie Nowak

Satoe Onizuka

Steven Orts

Owen Pace

Tatyana Palacios

Herin Park

Olga Pavlova

Luli Peralta-Esquivel

Lindsay Petricca

Constanza Pinto

Shreya Razak

Costanza Reiser

Vincent Riportella

Bateel Saber

Ahana Seth

Cristina Soberon

Rebecca Speiser

Natalia Spotts

Sabrina Steck

JD Stephenson Jr.

Richard Supriano

Eden Tartour

Jissaura Taveras Hernandez

Nathalia Tello Arias

Liz Tsai

Altyn Turdukulova

Amena Tyebji

Gabriela Vieira

Juan Diego Villegas

Yige Wang

Evelyn Wu

Jessie Yao

Crystal Yin

Rebecca Jiayi Zhou