#6 Experimental Camera

Description

Since Covid-19, we have been using Zoom a lot more than before for various situations, such as classes, business meetings, and interviews. And we see our reflections that stay on the right top corner all the time over zoom calls. And I realized that I become more self-conscious about my appearance in a not-healty way. Also, it sometimes distracts me from concentrating on the coversation happening in the call.

So I decieded to create a camera that can distort the image of my reflection when I'm on a zoom call. While this camera will send a normal video of you, you will only see the filtered image of yourself. It'll be helpful in the professional occasion that you are required to turn on your camera but do not want to see your reflection.

Design Process & Reflection

I had three sketches for this week's assignment: a daily log with a random photo of a day, a virtual group photo with a shared background, a filter for Zoom. First one is one of the way to care one's mental health by logging everyday's feeling. In these days, our screen time has been dramatically increased and I thought it would be a nice sum up if I could use the laptop camera to take one photo each day. Second one is a virtual background that can be shared by multiple parties while they are on facetime so that people can feel more connected as if they are in the same place. Third one, which was my final choice for this assignment is a camera filter for Zoom. I thought it is a timely topic that can affect my daily life more effectively than other sketches.
The most intriguing content of this week is transitioning the video into an array of r,g,b,a values which I can tweak into numerous variations. I thought image and coidng are totally different thing but after this assignment I was mesmerized by the fact that the smallest unit of a video is a number.