15 seconds of fame - an interactive, computer-vision based art installation

"15 seconds of fame" is an interactive art installation, which elevates the face of a randomly selected gallery visitor for 15 seconds into a "work of art". The installation was inspired by Andy Warhol's statement that "In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes" as well as by the pop-art style of his works. The installation consists of a computer with a flat-panel monitor, a digital camera and a proprietary software that can detect human faces in images and graphically transform them. In this paper we present the technical background of the installation, in particular, how computer vision techniques were applied in this art installation.