OPEN FORUM A glance of cultural differences in the case of interactive device art installation idMirror Mas ˇa Jazbec 1 • Floris Erich Arden 1 • Hiroo Iwata 2 Received: 31 May 2017 / Accepted: 16 June 2017 Ó Springer-Verlag London Ltd. 2017 Abstract The idMirror project consists of a tablet com- puter, specially equipped with a small mirror and a newly developed android app. The Android application uses face recognition to detect the location of the user’s face in relation to the device and based on this renders a computer graphic at the location of his or her reflection. The goal of the idMirror project setting as a research tool was to make an exploratory study on cultural differences at exhibition venues. For this study, we have analyzed 150 participants’ face images aged between 18 and 75; among them, 50 (25 females and 25 males) participants’ face images collected in Europe, 50 (25 females and 25 males) participants’ face images collected in the USA, and 50 (25 females and 25 males) participants’ face images collected in Japan. We found global exhibitions a good research platform for random sampling of the subjects. For the study, we examined the first 50 (25 female and 25 male) participants at each exhibition and we found some significant differ- ences. Through the explanatory study in the form of an art installation, we wanted to learn if the facial expression upon one’s own self-observation is a function of gender and place of exhibition setting origin. Keywords Cultural differences Á Facial expression Á Interactivity Á Physical reality Á Mobile technologies Á Device art 1 Introduction The idMirror project opens the possibilities of how to redefine classic art with the help of new technologies. New technologies in computer systems and artificial intelligence make new directions in art possible. One of those directions is a creation of highly interactive works based on compu- tation. From artistic point of view, interactive art is not a new phenomenon. The questioning of the role of the artist, the work, and the audience, the relationship between art and society can be traced back to the 1960s when the movements of Fluxus, happenings art, participatory art, and cybernetic art already provided many ingredients for interactive art. The spectator turns into the user that pro- vides the meanings, and in a sense creates the work at the moment of the interaction. Interactivity plays an important role in new media art as described by Turkle (2005). As stated in the book Windows and Mirrors, today, we do not operate computers; rather, we interact with them, and successful digital artifacts are designed to be experienced, not simply used. To design a digital artifact is to chore- ograph the experience that the user will have (Botler and Gromala 2005). idMirror installation is doing exactly that it creates the experience. With the introduction of new agents in technologies, and gadgets such as the mobile phone, the hand-held comput- ers, GPS navigators, portable media players or iPads, etc. the borders between the real and the virtual world are becoming unstable and more and more indistinct. We have still not abandoned our bodies and our physical reality to & Mas ˇa Jazbec masamikkel@gmail.com Floris Erich Arden erich@ai.iit.tsukuba.ac.jp Hiroo Iwata iwata@kz.tsukuba.ac.jp 1 Program in Empowerment Informatics, University of Tsukuba, Tennodai, Tsukuba 305-8573, Japan 2 Faculty of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Tsukuba, Tennodai, Tsukuba 305-8573, Japan 123 AI & Soc DOI 10.1007/s00146-017-0737-0