Face Fake

in cooperation with Internil, re:publica/performasion Berlin 2016

In 2016, during re:publica/performasion, I developed a performative workshop that explored the complex entanglement between human emotions and technology. Re:publica is one of Europe’s premier conferences at the intersection of digital culture, society, and technology, bringing together thinkers, artists, and activists to engage with how technological advances shape our society.

The workshop emerged as a response to the politically charged climate of 2016, marked by the rise of Trumpism and a surge of misinformation, where social media had become both the catalyst and the source of profound ideological shifts. As algorithms, trends, and viral content increasingly dictated emotional responses online, the project metaphorically and practically demonstrated the connection between human emotions and technology-driven manipulation.

This reversed the typical function of sentiment analysis: instead of detecting emotions through facial expressions, the system imposed expressions on participants based on spoken inputs such as "angry," "happy," "surprised," or "sad." Electrodes attached to facial muscles triggered involuntary expressions in response to these commands.

The concept of "remote emotion control" highlighted the extent to which our emotional output can be dictated or simulated by external technological interventions and raised questions about the boundary between authentic emotional responses and those artificially induced by technology. This not only had implications for performance and acting, where such tools could potentially enhance or manipulate an actor's delivery, alluding to a dystopic future of "digital humans" but also posed larger questions about authenticity, agency, and the growing role of technology in shaping our emotional landscapes. By reversing the sentiment analysis process, the workshop also critiqued how technology often reduces complex emotional experiences into simplistic, measurable data points for purposes like marketing, surveillance, and social media interaction. Rather than merely observing our emotions, these technologies actively shape them, much like the participants' faces were being shaped by commands beyond their control.

By hacking the TENS device to trigger specific facial expressions, the project created a direct, visible link between linguistic input and emotional output. This established an immediate physical feedback loop, revealing the cyclical nature of emotion manipulation in digital spaces. Like the echo chambers of social media, where emotional reactions are heightened and reflected back through algorithms, the system I built showed how technology enforces its own logic. The technical setup could only recognize preset categories, such as "happy" or "angry," and would interpret and return data within those constraints. This creates a closed system, unable to detect emotions outside of predefined classifications. In this way, the device not only amplifies limited aspects of emotional expression but also "misreads" input that doesn't align with its predefined metrics, reinforcing a self-contained and rigid emotional framework. This mirrors how digital technologies filter and categorize our emotional lives, subtly shaping them according to algorithmic logic, often misrepresenting and distorting more complex emotional realities. Through the lens of this performative experiment, the project questioned the boundaries between organic and synthetic emotional responses. It suggested that in a hyper-connected world, the line between what we feel and what we are made to feel by technology is becoming ever more blurred.