Fusiform Polyphony (Face Music) is a series of six robotic sculptures commissioned by Nuit Blanch Toronto. They are designed to compose music with input from participants’ facial images.

Micro video cameras mounted on these robots move toward people’s faces while capturing human snapshots. These images are digitally processed, pixelated, and turned into a constantly evolving generative soundscape, where facial features are turned into generative sound melody and rhythm.

These robots take the multicultural makeup of any city and have each person’s unique look, creating a different soundscape. Each “face song,” joining with other facial soundscapes, makes an overall sonic human/robot experience.

These elements fused manifest the viewer as participant/actor/contributor and conductor in defining new ways of interacting with robots and creating a unique sonic and live-action robotics/video environment.

Side story Fusiform Polyphony (Face Music) is a series of six robotic sculptures commissioned by Nuit Blanch Toronto and curated by Shirley Madill. Fusiform Polyphony composes music with input from participants' facial images.
Micro video cameras on the tips of these soft robots, covered in human hair, move toward people's faces while capturing human snapshots. These images are digitally processed, pixelated, and turned into a constantly evolving generative soundscape, where facial features turn these images into abundant sound melodies and rhythm.

These robots take the multicultural makeup of any city and have each person's unique look, creating a different soundscape. Each "face song," combined with other facial soundscapes, makes an overall sonic human/robot experience.

These elements fused manifest the viewer as participant/actor/contributor and conductor in defining new ways of interacting with soft robots and creating a unique sonic and live-action robotics/video environment.

Another critical component of this work is projections of these many facial and digitized images above Yonge Dundas Square onto the LED screens that float above the city. These works will explore new morphologies of soft robotics, an emerging field where soft skins and gentle software code allow these robots to have an artificial sense of their environment and be more approachable than industrial robots.

The question this art/science research posits; in the context of contemporary interactive and immersive electronic arts is; how can a robot structure, inform, enhance and magnify people's behavior and interactions?

How can generative algorithms be scripted to compose and playback a unique and constantly evolving generative soundscape while maintaining and enhancing the viewer's experience?