The Situated Psychic Eye
I am fascinated by fortune tellers and the idea of a "psychic eye" (I don't buy the "psychic" one bit) but the elements of incredibly detailed observation and building from the 'telees' cues is interesting enough on its own. Using the computer vision to create an accurate bodily and verbal cue reader, was ever so slightly out of scope for this piece, but I wanted to continue with the idea of a psychic gaze. So, I created a tarot card reading set up, which incorporates the fun, a bit ridiculous, and somewhat mysterious air of telling the future.
My initial, and continued intent is to train the computer to recognize all 76 cards, however as I have yet to find a way to successfully load pre-stored images and upload the images taken, I scaled down slightly to save sanity when every time the program is restarted the cards are re-scanned.
The set up in a physical space I think is critical to creating the air of mystic, and I pulled a dirty trick in projecting onto a surface by zooming the unnecessary elements out of frame.( This would not be ideal for a final system set up.)
The program itself works beautifully to recognize the different cards, now I just need to figure out how to save and upload the training so that I can implement the entire deck.
Process:
