Happiness is the only true emotion

Every photo you post on Facebook or Instagram is checked by an algorithm recognising your emotions. How would you react if you knew that this process was flawed?

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, systems capable of recognising and interpreting human emotions are spreading throughout society. Happiness is the only true emotion deconstructs this new technological tool of population control. It is a critique of the generalisation of obscure algorithms present on social networks, in shopping centres, streets or airports.

The body of this work is the diversion of a series of portraits established by the University of Stirling in Scotland. Each of the actors in this visual database plays the six “universal human emotions”. I selected one expression per subject and cropped the photographs to keep only the face, modifying the portraits to make them even more expressive so that they become emotional vectors.

Each image was then submitted to Microsoft’s Face API, the leading algorithm in the field, to test its accuracy. The system only recognised happiness with certainty.

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Happiness is the only true emotion was published by RVB Books in September 2019.

More information on the book

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Happiness is the only true emotion is part of the installation Collateral Visions which explores human singularity inside algorithmic and computer visions.