people turn into comic book characters in an installation by nova jiang

‘ideogenetic machine’ by nova jiang image © otto saxinger

new york-based artist nova jiang has sent designboom images of her project, realized in collaboration with jake jefferies, ‘ideogenetic machine’ – an interactive installation that incorporates portraits of participants into an algorithmically generated comic book strip. participants pose in front of a camera that captures them live while a code transforms the photographic image into a cartoon style line drawing. face detection is employed to insert-code generated blank speech bubbles into the narrative.

to be consistent with rules precipitating from the compositional decisions of a human author, the software produces non-repetitive creations. the story elements are drawn by the artist – mostly depicting hypothetical story lines based on current news and events. audience members can e-mail the finished pieces as a PDF and fill in the speech bubbles with self-made dialogue. the work will be installed at tea/collective wisdom at the national taiwan museum of fine art in taichung in taiwan from october 12th through to december 23rd, 2012.

a video showing the installation in use

the camera captures audience members live while a code transforms the photographic image image © philippe gerlach

to be consistent with rules precipitating from the compositional decisions of a human author, the software produces non-repetitive creations image © philippe gerlach

face detection is employed to insert-code generated blank speech bubbles into the narrative image © philippe gerlach