Mindy Meng Wang & Monica Lim

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Can AI reveal your inner monster?

This game uses emotion recognition biometric AI to analyse your personal attributes and match you to a fantastical monster avatar from the Chinese mythical text 山海经 Shan Hai Jing (Classic of Mountains and Seas) from 4th century BCE. Catch elemental balls to evolve your avatar while discovering your custom interactive soundtrack created with machine learning.

Guài 怪 means strange, or monster, in Chinese. Chinese face reading or anthroposcopy is an ancient philosophy practised over centuries where facial attributes are linked to human characteristics. Modern-day AI biometric profiling has been used in wide-ranging applications from medicine, statistics, crime prevention and e-commerce. In creating this work, the artists debated whether to retain the gender binary of the biometric profiling. In the end, it was decided to retain this to reflect the assumptions built into the technology.

Is AI-based biometric analysis any more accurate than ancient face reading practices?

Privacy statement

This work takes a single photo of your face for the purpose of providing your biometric analysis and personalised soundtrack. This is deleted immediately after your individual experience and no record of your photo, biometric analysis nor any other individual information is kept.

Mindy Meng Wang and Monica Lim are artists who merge traditional and contemporary sound practices.

Mindy is recognised for pioneering guzheng performance in non-traditional genres such as experimental, jazz, western classical, electronic and improvisation and has won multiple national and international awards such as the Australian Asian Leadership Award 2023, the 2022 Sidney Myer Fellowship and ‘Best Musician’ Music Victoria Awards. She was the 2023 Melbourne Recital Centre Artist in Residence – the first to play a non-western instrument.

Monica is a sound artist and composer who works in cross-disciplinary forms combining cutting-edge technologies in fields as diverse as computer vision, gaming engines and movement computing with sound. Teaching and researching at the University of Melbourne, Monica is the recipient of multiple scholarships and awards and was recently artist in residence at the Grainger Museum and the Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio.

CREDITS

Lead Artists: Mindy Meng Wang & Monica Lim

Game Development: Qiushi Zhou, Jingcheng Wang & Andrew Mahisa Halim

Tech Supervisor: Adelaide Genay

3D Design: Henry Lai-Pyne

Animation Design: Melanie Huang

Set Design: Eugyeene Teh

Script & Narration: Enya Hu and Callum Wright

Also supported by the School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Creative Australia, Melbourne Fringe, Footscray Community Arts and City of Melbourne.

Installation photography: Matthew Stanton and Timothy Burgess

GUÀI