Interactive Design · 2021
Your mouth is the switch. Open it, and the slaughter begins.
01 / Context
Shark Fin Soup is an interactive installation that directly links the act of eating shark fin soup to the simultaneous slaughter of sharks in the ocean. Using Max 8 and faceOSC facial detection, the viewer’s own mouth controls the video in real time.
02 / Problem & Vision
Awareness campaigns about shark fin consumption often rely on graphic imagery that people turn away from. The challenge was to create a connection that is unavoidable — one that literally responds to the viewer’s own body, making them the cause rather than just a witness.
Make the viewer’s action cause the consequence directly. Your mouth is the switch. The causality should be impossible to ignore because it belongs to you.
03 / Key Interactions
FaceOSC detects the viewer’s mouth state in real time. Opening your mouth plays the slaughter scene at normal speed. Covering your mouth rewinds it at 2× speed — the fins grow back. The video’s fate is entirely in the viewer’s mouth.
A camera detects face presence and measures mouth open width and height. The Max 8 patch uses these values to control video playback direction, speed, and audio looping — different behaviors for each facial state.
04 / How It Works
The interaction is a direct, physical mirror of the viewer’s choice:
When your mouth opens as if to eat, the ocean slaughter plays forward at full speed.
When you cover your mouth and choose not to eat, the video rewinds — the fins grow back at 2× speed.
The causal loop makes the viewer the agent of harm — or of reversal.
05 / Design Process
My role
Solo interaction design project. Concept, visual design, and technical implementation.
What I did
Built the interaction logic in Max 8, using faceOSC for real-time facial tracking. The patch detects face presence, mouth open/close state, and measures open width and height to drive video playback speed, direction, and audio behavior independently for each state.
06 / Outcome
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Toy-like Experience · 2021
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