Parametric Portraits is a series of six looping animated portraits by Mike Pelletier. This series is a continuation of Pelletier’s long term project Parametric Expression, where human emotions are reduced to a set of technical parameters that can be repeated, transferred, manipulated and ultimately distorted. The works are presented as a study made with data from motion capture recordings of real facial expressions rather than predefined and preset expressions.

In each of the portraits motion capture recordings are mapped onto 3D avatars in varying states of digital distortion and decay. Though a series of repeating actions that fall into elegant loops the generated figures struggle to achieve some form of emotional connection; their efforts can only recede away across the vast chasm of the uncanny valley.