Humans Sound Like Apes

Local Community Science Hack / Interactive Installation

The project “Humans Sound Like Apes” addresses the field of affective sciences in humans and animals and the way mankind extrapolates human-centered academic terminology (e.g. from psychology) to the natural world. It illustrates this by linking the output of face/emotion recognition software to sounds made by animals experiencing an “equivalent” emotion. A public API available for face and emotion recognition was used and adapted with the use of programming and hacking, and combined with sounds obtained from scientific studies done by researchers while studying “animal emotions” in the lab and the field. The final hack hallmarks an interactive activity showcasing scientifically relevant data and state of the art technologies.

The project is part of the local community and a result of the Science Hack Day Berlin, and was realized by a strong multidisciplinary team comprised of specialists in fields ranging from programming to arts, psychology and science.

Chiara Esposito, Eeva-Liisa Puhakka, Franziska Lippoldt, Nenad Popov, Pablo Rojas.
Photo by Franziska Lippoldt