Altogether human: tracking and recording human emotion online

Symposium:

• ISEA2009: 15th International Symposium on Electronic Art

• Tracking Emotions

• Altogether human: tracking and recording human emotion online

• Edward O’Riordan

Venue(s):

• Waterfront Hall, Belfast, Ireland

• Abstract

  This paper will outline the creation of Altogether Human, a project which allows users to gain an overview of what people were feeling in the last 24 hours as reported by their internet personas in the forms of blogs and social networking services. The project attempted to both provide an overview of how people reported they were feeling in the last 24 hours, and also provide users with a means of accessing the individual ’emotional stories’ which made up the overall picture. The project provided a service whereby users could gain an overview of people’s emotional states in the last 24 hours, browse individual emotional stories, compare emotional trends over time, and create graphical visualisations based on this emotional data.

  The paper is divided into four sections (with further subsections). The first section will introduce the project and the motivation behind its creation. The second section will outline the content of the project and outline how Altogether Human gathered its content – where it looked for it, and how it filtered relevant from irrelevant content. The third section will outline the functionality which Altogether Human provided its users. It will examine how the project’s design goals were transferred into concrete functionality. The fourth and last section will briefly outline the future of the project.

Category:

• Paper