The Jupiter 9 Project: A study of perception of mood
This project, named after the Russian camera lens used to take all of the featured photos, is an exercise in perception. By way of a public participation survey, the hope is to determine if the emotional state of a viewer affects the way facial expression is interpreted.
This experiment was inspired by the phrase “Resting Bitch Face” or rather the opposite in this case. One night I incorrectly interpreted a grin on the face of my spouse when she was looking at her phone. While she emphatically denied seeing anything amusing at the time, my faulty perception got the wheels turning in my head. If this happens on a regular basis to other people, what could possibly be the ramifications?
Thus began the Jupiter 9 Project. I began taking photos specifically for this project whenever I was doing portraits or headshots for clients and have collected well over 100 individual examples that I’ve incorporated into the survey.
I now ask that you participate. Take the survey, answer honestly, and help me find out if there is indeed a correlation between mood and perception.
Your task is simple. Rate each photo on a scale of 1 to 10 based on what you think the mood of the person is. 1 being negative and 10 being positive. There is no definition of what negative or positive means. It is left up to your interpretation. Trust your first instincts, quickly select a rating, and then move to the next photo. Rate the photos as honestly as possible. There are no wrong answers. Have fun with it.