With the Smile TV, you're probably not going to want to flip on the nightly news or catch some reruns of Breaking Bad.
Artist David Hedberg, a graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, has designed a television that uses facial recognition technology to only work when the viewer is smiling. When you sit down to watch the TV, the device won't work until you show a grin. Lose the smile, and the screen goes back to static. The TV was on display at an exhibit at the college, and it seemed to impress the guys at The Fox is Black, who said the "execution is simply top-notch."
From Hedberg's website:
Bad reception used to be associated with the poor technical performance of an antenna. Just a decade ago it was much clearer who dictates the information which we absorb. Now, with content widely accessible the question is no longer if we can receive but if we are receptive. By expressing that we like something, we have very much become antennas ourselves - transmitting the content on to somebody else. This TV installation elaborates with facial recognition technology and a last-decade TV set to re-consider viewers engagement and how content is accessed. It only works if we smile.
Taken at face value, this technology is pretty annoying. Who wants to smile through an entire TV show? But imagine if the facial recognition software was in every American TV set. Television networks could not only measure if someone was watching, but how they reacted to the content. Did punch lines in sitcoms really land? Did the tear jerking finale to a drama actually cause someone to cry?
This technology would do much more than the traditional Nielsen ratings in terms of measuring actual viewer engagement. Hedberg has developed a really innovative piece of tech here. Just don't ask me to keep a psychotic smile on my face for 60 minutes.
