Omote exploded on the web yesterday, showing off a real-time face tracking and projection mapping experience. If you haven’t seen it, hit the jump. The experience shows how light can be applied as makeup, transforming a model’s face to include futuristic and abstract visuals. The work is led by Nobumichi Asai and a team of digital designers, CGI experts and make-up artists.

While there are few technical details, infrared markers on the model’s face are probably used as correspondences to a real time tracked model of the face (e.g., one supplied by the Kinect SDK). Latency introduced by the projector and system also means that fast movements are a no no, which probably explains the slow subtle movements on the model. Truly mesmerizing!