Investigating Human Silhouettes: A Study of Live Human Pin Art Installations
Stelvin Saji
January 27, 2026
Pin art has progressed from an early mechanical experiment to a recognized form of large-scale participatory visual expression. Its conceptual foundations originate in mid-twentieth-century research on pinscreen animation, a technique that employed dense arrays of movable pins to produce highly detailed, shadow-based imagery through direct physical manipulation. This principle was subsequently realized in an interactive, sculptural format during the 1970s through the work of artist Ward Fleming, who developed the boxed pin art object, a structured grid of displaceable metal pins capable of recording transient three-dimensional impressions of hands, faces, and everyday objects. Following its presentation in experimental exhibitions and later patenting and commercialization, pin art achieved widespread recognition as a tactile and pedagogical medium, becoming a familiar presence in offices, educational institutions, and science museums. Despite variations in scale, materials, and fabrication, its fundamental mechanism has remained consistent: the translation of physical contact into a visible spatial imprint.
More recently, pin art has experienced renewed cultural visibility through its circulation within digital and social media environments. Short-form visual demonstrations, typically characterized by the sudden emergence of a three-dimensional form from an ostensibly flat surface, correspond closely with contemporary modes of algorithmically mediated content consumption. The immediacy of this transformation, together with the perceptual illusion of depth generated through physical displacement, renders pin art particularly effective within short-form video contexts, facilitating broad dissemination and sustained audience engagement across digital platforms.
This study investigates contemporary computational strategies for simulating and extending pin art within digital environments, employing a practice-based research methodology that integrates interactive systems and visualization techniques. By situating pin art within computational frameworks, the research reconceptualizes it as an interdisciplinary practice operating at the intersection of embodied interaction, interactive art, and technological mediation. Within this framework, pin art is examined not as a static artifact, but as an adaptive system capable of supporting collective participation and experiential interpretation
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Tags: Digital Transformation, Education, Innovation
Face Morphing in Images: A Novel Approach Using Aligned Facial Landmarks
Stelvin Saji
November 25, 2025
Face swapping, the process of replacing one individual’s facial identity with another while preserving visual realism, has attracted increasing attention across digital entertainment, augmented reality, creative media, and digital forensics. This work presents an animated face-swapping system for static images that enables continuous and seamless cycling of facial identities among multiple individuals detected within a single frame.
The proposed method employs precise facial landmark detection to compute tightly aligned, rotation-aware bounding boxes that isolate only the inner facial oval, intentionally excluding hair, background regions, and other non-facial artifacts. To achieve visually coherent integration across identities, the pipeline combines color normalization, lighting transfer via homomorphic filtering, and unsharp masking, followed by seamless cloning using OpenCV. Facial transitions are animated through easing functions and temporal interpolation, producing smooth morphing effects rather than abrupt identity replacements.
The system is implemented as a high-performance, React-based web component optimized for execution on consumer-grade hardware. Experimental observations demonstrate improved facial alignment, smoother temporal transitions, and enhanced perceptual realism when compared with baseline static face-swapping techniques. These characteristics make the system suitable for interactive media applications, creative visual tools, and privacy-preserving identity transformation workflows.
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Tags: AI, Privacy, Startups
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Investigating Human Silhouettes: A Study of Live Human Pin Art Installations
