This was a university project for my module Data and Machine Learning. The brief required I use the technology pix2pix in a creative way, following the theme "Parallel World".
pix2pix is a machine learning technology able to transform doodles into photorealistic pictures based on the database it gets trained on. For this exercise we were asked to use pix2pix trained on images of cats.
First, I created a 256x256 canvas which contained the webcam feed - the user could take a thresholded black and white snapshot of it by clicking a button and edit the obtained picture by drawing or erasing parts of the image with the cursor.
Since this particular pix2pix model only recognises doodles of cats, I decided to turn the snapshot of my human face into a feline looking one using the drawing and erasing tools; by clicking the Transfer button, pix2pix then transformed the human-feline hybrid doodle I'd made into a semi-photorealistic image of a cat.
To accompany this exercise I wrote a somewhat satirical science fiction account of an imaginary fantasy adventure in which a human protagonist must use this technology to be transformed into a cat and enter the Feline Multiverse in order to escape a post-apocalyptic human world. This was then turned into the video above
To display this project most effectively, I created Ministry-of-Feline-Defense.org, a fictional website for "information and training purposes" which illustrates the procedure described in the story and allows the user to try the technology themselves. A second page contains imaginary reviews of previous imaginary users, including the science fiction video.
Ministry-of-Feline-Defense.org can be found at: https://www.doc.gold.ac.uk/~fbrie002/Ministry-of-Feline-Defense/
(Screenshots below)
