Emotional Fugitive Detector turns your face into a game controller

Emotional Fugitive Detector is an imposing silver box from a dystopian future in which personal expression has been outlawed. It’s a co-op video game installation by graduate students from New York University’s game design program, who have taken it on tour to the Game Developers Conference and the IndieCade Festival, where it was a finalist.

An explanation on the side of the box explains that it’s a test from the Human Management Bureau, which has outlawed emotions. When I tried it at IndieCade, I sat on one side of the box, resting my head in the “Evaluation Aperture.” My partner sat on the other side. Our task was to fool the machine, which uses facial recognition technology to detect traces of emotion.