Phrenologiscope

Part of an ongoing examination of authorship in portraits and images of people, this piece uses the now defunct Victorian pseudoscience of phrenology to consider if narrative control lies not with the photographer, the sitter or even the viewer, but with the sitter's very bones.

Based on Victorian penny arcade machines, the cabinet 'reads' the contours and features of the user’s head and face, and produces a printed reading of the personality. The system utilises PureData, Arduino, Irfanview and some simple .bat and .cmd files. and was originally produced for MakerFaire Dublin and shown at the Science Gallery. More details, code etc is available at Recyclism Hacklab