Will

Comments: face of tomorrow

I've always been fascinated by some of the science behind beauty, e.g. the fact that when you create an "average face" it is rated as highly beautiful in studies. In addition, symmetry, it’s theorized, is considered beautiful because it is easier for the brain to process a symmetrical face over an asymmetrical one, since the "data" of one half is almost identical to the other half, thus the brain can "compress and decompress" it more easily.

This is an interesting work, but it seems to make some obviously false assumptions, namely that the group of people in a particular place will randomly mate and eventually create something like the being represented in the image.

I think it would be more interesting (although quite impossible) to look at stats on who would likely mate according to age, race, sexual orientation, attractiveness, etc. Although this would likely highlight some sad facts of life, and I’m guessing rub some who enjoy the idea of a utopian society the wrong way.

Posted by brad at August 24, 2004 10:52 PM

it just so happens that my MIT Media Lab thesis was a DARPA funded face hack like this one for the purposes of an Identikit;
the notion being that victims might recall whole faces that were "kinda like" a target face (the face to be recalled or reconstructed) more easily than putting together a face from individual components. If you can get a laser disc working, I can show you a lot of registered faces and composits.

Posted by pweil at August 25, 2004 3:56 PM

There are laser disc players in the Cinema-Television libray at Doheny Library.

Posted by kellee at August 25, 2004 6:39 PM

Also check out artist Nancy Burson's work in this area: http://www.nancyburson.com/newwork_fr.html

And way back in the 19th century, Sir Charles Galton managed to get his cousin Charles Darwin interested in the idea of combining faces in a Stereoscope - ie fusing a different face to each eye - as a means to investigate his (misguided) interest in 'eugenics'. He seems to be the first to notice that the fused face has a 'decided improvement' as a result.
http://www.mugu.com/browse/galton/search/essays/pages/galton-1878-nature-composite_2.htm

Posted by sfisher at August 25, 2004 7:23 PM

This is Mike from Istanbul - I'm actually a Trojan myself so I was amused to see that you guys had stumbled across the website. In regards to the "mating process". The result is not entirely the random product of the fusion of 100 people. Because of practicalities (such as there being more men normally in any sample), because of cost contraints (it costs about $2000 to add each city) and because of artistic licence (i wanted the face to be a youthful one); each male or female face is the product of only 16 individuals. these individuals are selected by the participants themselves according to my instructions in the "source code". while i ask people to try and put their biases aside, it is invetible that the individuals chosen tend to be more attractive. so in some way there IS an element of natural selection going on, although i am loathe to use this word as it can be misunderstood. at this level the project becomes more interesting as each location is essentially projecting some aspect of itself forward into the future. the project is still very young and i don't think anything useful can be concluded until we have several dozen more locations.

Posted by Mike Mike at August 27, 2004 12:08 AM

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