Video Credits: Evotions by Srikesh (Kesh) Sundaresan
Mind Peek — Singapore Art Museum Artdose 2023
Mind Peek is an interactive art installation that turns human emotions into living, breathing lightscapes. Powered by Artificial Intelligence, it reads visitors’ facial expressions and transforms them into evolving patterns of light and sound, creating a shared space where feelings become tangible and connected.
The Vision behind Mind Peek
Dialogue and empathy are not always easy. For some, especially neurodivergent individuals, reading facial expressions can be challenging, which means emotions often remain hidden or misunderstood. With Mind Peek, we wanted to bridge the gap by making inner emotions visible and shareable by capturing facial expressions.
As visitors interact with one another through a screen, their facial expressions are translated in real time into glowing orbs of colour within a collective environment, turning private emotions into shared experiences. By recognising how our emotional states intertwine, we are reminded that wellness is both personal and communal, a butterfly effect that ripples outward to shape communities and influence societal well‑being.
Colors and Conversations
We brought the exhibit to life with two interactive experiences: a reflective corner where visitors sketched and wrote what each color meant to them, and a museum‑led ‘Ask Me Anything’ that sparked direct conversations with us as artists.
Hong Kong PolyU Exhibition: Art & Technology Convergence
Mind Peek was also featured at the “Researching the Future” Art Tech Exhibition, organised by the PolyU Research Centre for Cultural and Art Technology (CAT) at the Jockey Club Innovation Tower, Hong Kong. We were invited to present alongside leading scholars and artists from Asia to highlight the intersection of art and technology, positioning Mind Peek as a pioneering work in immersive AI-driven experiences.
Technical Implementation
At the core of Mind Peek lies a system that bridges advanced engineering with immersive art. By leveraging AI-powered computer vision, we transform subtle facial expressions into radiant orbs of colour, making emotions visible and interactive within the exhibition space.
We utilised a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model with a Python‑based facial recognition library to detect subtle changes in facial features and interpret them as emotional states. These signals are transmitted via an MQTT IoT broker for seamless communication into Unity, a real‑time 3D development engine. We transform our audience's facial expressions into glowing orbs that fill the room, each orb representing a category of the emotional spectrum. The orbs are rendered and projection-mapped into the museum space, turning private feelings into visible, shared signals that help people understand one another and see how individual emotions shape the community.
Behind the Scenes: From Concept to Exhibition
Acknowledgements
Mind Peek was incubated within the NUS Innovation and Design Programme, in collaboration with the Singapore Art Museum (SAM). The project continued from Museum Alive, an interdisciplinary joint studio offered by the NUS College of Design and Engineering, which explored how engineering and art can converge in immersive exhibition formats.
I would like to thank the Mind Peek team: Jay Ng Yu Zhe, Srikesh Sundaresan, Janessa Song, Joanne Joseph and sound designer Avik Chari. The team worked under the supervision of Prof Khoo Eng Tat, with support from the SAM curatorial team: Dr Lim Chye Hong, Andrea Fam, Nicole Tan, and Maria Tang.
Recognitions
In recognition of its innovation and impact, Mind Peek received the Most Inspiring Award at the NUS Engineering Design and Innovation Centre Annual Project Showcase 2023, affirming its role as a pioneering exploration of emotion visualisation that fuses engineering and art.
