Mesh Bust

“What do I look like to my computer”? My first response to this question was a time-lapse video of my working day from of my computer’s camera. I then looked at how it would create its own representation of me staring at it.

The result is a script that starts with a flat mesh. It then moves each vertex in a random manner and compares the rendered mesh with an image of my face. It repeats this process over and over, trying to get closer to the image it has of me. I use a fitness algorithm that influences how much the vertices move, depending on how close the surrounding part of the image is to the source image.

The geometry it creates is quite different from my face, but when rendered on the screen, it is a fair approximation. It reflects the fact that a computer model of someone is built quickly but does not necessarily represent reality.

Technical Details

Technology: Java, Processing, 3D