Computer Vision in Contemporary Art (Introduction to the Special Session) Peter Peer, Borut Batagelj Computer Vision Laboratory, Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana, Tržaška 25, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia E-mail: peter.peer@fri.uni-lj.si Abstract - Contemporary art nowadays tries to exploit modern technology to better address and enlighten specific problems and ideas of our time. Our interest in wider impact of modern technology on society and the interest in contemporary art, brought our attention also to the applicative field of use of computer vision methods in art. The paper walks us through a few projects, proving that art is definitely a perfect testbed for our research: 15 seconds of fame, Virtual skiing, Dynamic anamorphosis and Virtual painter, from face detection, motion following, depth recovery, touchless human-computer interaction to pop-art, constant eye gaze of a person on the portrait, regardless of where the spectator stands, immersion into different virtual worlds without the need for any special equipment. Keywords - Face Detection, Tracking, Depth Recovery, Transformations, Human-Computer Interaction, Virtual World, Social Impact 1. INTRODUCTION Human ability to function in multiple disciplines, communities is again becoming very important. Latest observations in computer vision community are also showing the need for collaboration between our community, computer graphics community and contemporary art community. We are talking about somekind of convergence, eventhough the idea has been around for some time now. A wider discussion is always appreciated as similar problems are enlightened from different perspectives. In such a way a specific professional terminology becomes community-independent (or at least less dependent), similar solutions are refactored, joint, improved, the ideas become clearer, new applicative areas are found. By following this philosophy, we initiated collaboration between our faculty and the Academy of Fine Art and Design at the University of Ljubljana. To be more precise, the collaboration between the students of both faculties within the undergraduate subject Communication Methods at our faculty was initiated by prof. Franc Solina (Faculty of Computer and Information Science) and prof. Srečo Dragan (Academy of Fine Art and Design). The successfull collaboration resulted also in the establishment of the formal association called ArtNetLab [1], which core purpose is to support fusion of science and art. This is way the next section talks about the way the students collaborate and points to some latest projects. Our interest in contemporary art and also because of seeing art as the perfect testbed for our research, a new and interesting applicative area for us, we also developed some installations out of the scope of the mentioned undergraduate subject. Thus, in section 3 we present a project 15 Seconds of Fame, an interactive art installation which elevates the face of a randomly selected gallery visitor for 15 seconds into a work of art. In section 4 we describe another project called Dynamic Anamorphosis, an installation that enables constant eye gaze of a person on the portrait, regardless of where the spectator stands. Virtual Skiing and Virtual Painter ideas are discussed in section 5, and the conclusion are given in section 6. 2. HOW COMMUNITIES COLLABORATE? At the Academy of Fine Art and Design they have a Department for Video and New Media. Postgraduate students studying at this department develop an idea that incorporates new technologies into it. Since the art students are less experienced with technical development, have less engineering skills, we form a project group around them. The project team normally consists of one art student and two to four undergraduate students from the Faculty of Computer and Information Science in their final year of study. The advisor is also assigned to them to help them successfully carry out the project in the given time-frame, to monitor the progress, to suggest, point out the right approach. Each year we form around 10 teams and they have a bit less than a semester to finish the project, present it and write a final report. The projects are then also presented, exhibited at different festivals. One of the latest interesting projects was Motion- Visual Interaction, a system for interactive virtual dance performance. The system allows to define a