On Chance and Face_FINALpublished_withImages

On Chance and Face
Tony Oursler
Photograph of unknown origin, 1931, Tony Oursler Collection
PAREIDOLIA The phenomenon of seeing faces and other images mistakenly is known as Pareidolia. Of
Greek origin, the word is a combination of para, meaning alongside and in this context faulty or wrong,
and eidos meaning image, form, shape.
“You should look at certain walls stained with damp, or at stones of uneven colour. If you have to
invent some backgrounds you will be able to see in these the likeness of divine landscapes,
adorned with mountains, ruins, rocks, woods, great plains, hills and valleys in great variety; and
then again you will see there battles and strange figures in violent action, expressions of faces and
clothes and an infinity of things which you will be able to reduce to their complete and proper forms.
In such walls the same thing happens as in the sound of bells, in whose stroke you may find every
named word which you can imagine.”
- Leonardo da Vinci, Treatise on Painting
The randomly positioned craters on the moon resolve
into a face: the man in the moon. Mars too has a face in
the Cydonia region. People tend to see faces in
abstract, noisy, and grainy patterns such as stone,
clouds, the more random the better. It is as if the brain
tries to read the unreadable in the most familiar of
ways. If one sees a face in the clouds it is an amusing
occurrence but upon further inspection it is confusing
and contradictory. First, you know it is a cloud but it is
also an image of a face. To confuse things more the
face has characteristics; it looks, for example, young,
shy and slightly fearful. Of course itʼs just a cloud but
Cydonia region of Mars, 1976
why does it make me want to help and comfort it? Why
is it upsetting to look at? This is not an acceptable
mental state, perhaps it is tainted by contradictory shades of psychosis. To observe the personified cloud
as it slowly distorts on the wind is to remain in that moment of confusion. Most of us would shut this
thought pattern down quickly. Why did I see a face in the sky? I donʼt see people who are not there nor
hear words that are unspoken.
HOLLOW-MASK How did we arrive at the first mold of
a face? Could it have been the result of a person
falling face first into the muddy bank of a river? A cast
of a face in positive is accurate to the detail, yet it
seems moribund and lifeless. This could be because
when we gaze upon a face we also gaze into it, the
skin being radiant and reflective, slightly translucent. A
face made from whatever material never seems to sit
in space correctly. Perhaps ritual candles dripping on a
corpse led to the production of death masks.
Producing such a mask would be a two part process:
first, casting a negative, and then filling the mold to get
the positive. Eventually, during this process one
discovers that looking at the negative form, the hollow-mask, can spark an optical illusion; the negative
seems to jump into positive relief. Under test conditions, the hollow-mask cannot be distinguished from
the positive face by most people. This is evidence of the bias of top-down perception. We are so
conditioned to see a face as positive that when presented with negative visual elements the brain
overrides actual optical clues and sees the hollow-mask inside out. Most people take the visual image
and match it to a preconceived precept, with the exception of schizophrenics and people under the
influence of drugs such as THC and LSD. The disorienting effects of these drugs, which can range from
mild hallucinations to full Dali-like facial melting, somehow heightens the usersʼ ability to break the hollow
face illusion. It has been theorized that these conditions allow the brain to be flooded with extra
information. We receive roughly 11 million bits of information from the world around us at any given time,
yet we can only process approximately 200 bits at a time. The dilemma of the hollow-mask gives us a
window into the possibility of other ways of our processing information. Which side of the mask are you
on?
MICRO-EXPRESSION A face is only frozen when rendered in a
sculpture, drawing or photograph. The strange rubbery-looking
flesh mask known as the face is ever changing. Age and gravity
pull and etch it over the long term. The face is a membrane
forever mediating the flow of information in and out, controlling the
environment as best it can, overtly and secretly. Do you trust that
smile? Look again. Look carefully, your life may hang in the
balance. Do the eyes match the expression of the mouth? Microexpressions, easily detectable in slow motion replay, twitch across
the visage in a fraction of a second. In 1966, in search of nonverbal communication, Haggard and Issacs studied slowed down
film of patients in psychotherapy, and discovered microexpressions lasting only 1/25 to 1/15 of a second. These
expression are not easily perceived but can be used to decode
true emotions and attempts at deceptions, blocks and masks
happening subliminally. These fleeting expressions of impulse and
control bubble uncontrollably to the surface of the face as though
it is at war with its self.
Julius Kerner used ink-blots on folded
paper to generate images
In 1936 poet Antonin Artaud journeyed through Mexico on horseback. He
repeatedly saw a manʼs head formed out of the cleft in a rock and pierced
by rays of the sun. He became convinced that the rock formations in the
landscape were full of images of the language, people, science and gods
of the area. He saw these forms repeat time and again as he traveled on,
convincing him that these were not the result of chance; he had
discovered the mathematical secrets that governed the region.
Image of St. Vartan near Chermoog,
Armenia
...when the same pathetic forms appear, when the heads of familiar gods
appear on the rocks, when the theme of death emanates from them, a
death for which man obstinately bears the expense -- when the
dismembered form of man is answered by the forms of gods that have
always tortured him, become less obscure.
- Antonin Artaud, The Mountain of Signs
ADDICTED TO CHANGE We will never know what she would have looked like
had she not have had the operation. She was sure that she did not want to have
the same face anymore. She is happy to have abandoned that face and gained
another. She wants to forget the old face and enjoy the new one. Her friends and
relatives feel cast out of the order of time, they struggle to connect the old face
and the memories associated with it to the new. They reject her, claiming she
now looks monstrous.
Jocelyn Wildenstein
CLOUDS Albertus Magnus charted images in stone and clouds.
He believed that the creatures in clouds were perfect yet lifeless
animal bodies. He believed they were connected in someway to
the phenomenon of creatures and objects falling from the sky.
Sometimes we see a cloud thatʼs dragonish; A vapor sometime
like a bear or lion, A towerʼd citadel, a pendent rock, a forked
mountain, or blue promontory With tree uponʼt, that nod unto the
world, And mock our eyes with air ...
- Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra
Memory is collected in the cloud; it hangs over your head like a cartoon. Shuffle your feet and move this
way and that but you canʼt escape the shower of digital information. You did not pay that bill on time, you
have or have not had a communicable disease, a love of pop music, your last purchase was an electric
cigarette. Your history follows you around although you would like to forget much of it and, worse, some of
it is embarrassing. It makes you hyper-vigilant and resigned to the desires, patterns and limitations which
constitute the person you see in the mirror. You are always on a stage performing for the government/
corporation. You long for the days when your memory was your own, your history shared with relevant
persons and dispersed among associated locations. Your thoughts were once your own and now they are
anticipated, deduced and rain down upon you.
SMILEY The smiley is a distinctly American pop culture icon originating from the
mid 1900s. A graphic and stylized representation of a smiling human face, the
happy face was utilized in various marketing schemes in the 1950s, but it wasnʼt
until 1963 that commercial artist Harvey Ball created the iconic image most widely
known today. Ballʼs version, a bright yellow circular face with dark, oval eyes and
crease-ended smile, was originally created for a local State Mutual Life Assurance
in Worcester, Massachusetts. Later the graphic was connected to the phrase
“Have a nice day.”
LIVING DEAD, DECEMBER 2008 Surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, USA, transplanted the face of
a donor corpse to a live recipient. The secret operation was controversial because of the possibility of
cosmetic abuses and the possibility of extreme distress to the patient if the procedure failed. Doctors
justified this operation because the patient could not function in society, “She was called names. Children
were afraid of her -- they were running away”. The patient was never shown a photograph of the donor.
Due to bone structure and surgery the new face will look like a blend of the face she was born with and
the donorʼs.
EIGEN The machine is actually better at identifying a face than a
human is. The machine can understand that you are unique. The
machine has been taught to see you bit by bit and it knows the
face fits within the schemata. It has quantified all possible feature
combinations of the human face. It is making a mathematical template for all known variations of the human face. Eigen is a term
used by David Hilbert meaning “own” or “peculiar to” to define a
non-zero vector which, when a particular linear transformation is
applied, may change in length but not direction. The eigenface
developed by Sirovich and Kirby in 1987 became an important
component of the early face identification systems; by turning the
face into a two-dimensional gray scale of distinguishing features,
then converting these images to assigned mathematical values
and finally converting these to an eigenvector representing an
eigenface. The face is no longer an image as we understand it but
Set of Eigenfaces
a visualized set of numbers. Once enrolled in this system each
new eigenface is compared to templates. In this way we have an understanding of how the machine may
see us, know us, find us. Early recognition systems could be easily tricked and confused. The face must
be presented in ideal lighting conditions and straight ahead.
Facial Recognition Systems are ubiquitous and used at ATM
machines and other public sites. Your face becomes a small bit of
corporate and/or government property. Adam Harvey, designer and
technologist with NYUʼs interactive Telecommunications Program, has
begun reverse-engineering algorithms behind face detection to see if
he could stop detection. He tested random patterns of high contrast
makeup applied to faces which were then scanned by FRS machines.
He found the above simple pat- terns caused the systems to fail; the
painted face did not register as human.
I improvised a theory of automatic art: “Gentlemen, you recall the boy of the fairy tale who wanders
into the forest and catches sight of the siren of the woods. She is as beautiful as the day, with
emerald green hair, etc. As he draws near she turns her back, which resembles a tree trunk.
Clearly, the boy saw nothing but a tree trunk, and his lively imagination supplied the rest.”
This has often happened to me.
- August Strindberg, New Directions in Art,
or the Role of Chance in Artistic Creation
EYES SMILE The Greeks were known to have associated
personal appearance and inner character. The most well-known
work on the subject is a slim volume, Physiognomonics, ascribed
to the school of Aristotle. Physiognomy, which means literally
ʻnature as interpreterʼ, attempts to catalogue and ascribe meaning
to various facial types. Gillaume Dechenneʼs On Localized
Electrization and its Application to Pathology and Therapy, first
published in 1855, showed photographic evidence of his use of
electric shock to the muscles of the face to approximate
expressions. He identified 13 primary emotions and believed the
exploration of the link between outer emotions and inner states
would help to decode the human soul. He discerned that a genuine
smile not only used the muscles of the mouth but those
surrounding the eyes as well. Such “true” smiles are known as
Duchenneʼs smiles. Charles Darwin went on to consult Duchenne
and use some of his photographs in his work, The Expression of
the Emotions in Humans and Animals. Duchenneʼs student
Charcot invited people to observe the mental patients at the Salpêtrière Hospital, in a fusion of spectacle
and science. Charcotʼs student at the time was Sigmund Freud.
OUT OF THE CORNER OF MY EYE By accident, Sean C.
Murphy discovered that if normal photographs of faces, seen in
peripheral vision, were flashed on a screen in a slow sequence,
ʻgrotesqueʼ distortion effect occurred. What is now referred to as
the Flash Face Distortion Effect occurs when comparing a set of
eye-aligned faces one after the other. According to Murphy,
“relative encoding, or the peripheral comparison of one face to
another”, could explain the exaggeration of features. While taking
the test, I noticed a collage-like effect, reminiscent of dada
graphic, but more horrific. It is as if the brain sees the series of
different stills faces as one moving face and is struggling to show
changes of expression on that face. Due to the off-center
positioning of the faces the brain has little information to interpret
and in the process of filling in the details produces distortion. Or
maybe the brain produces its own set of horrific caricatures to
warn us of indeterminate activities that must be immediately
attended too. Peripheral vision has long been the site of the
uncanny. Itʼs as if we find the limits of our perception coinciding
with the perimeter of our fire light.
Artist rendering of Flash Face Distortion Effect
Card 1 of 10 of Rorschach ink-blot test, used to categorize mental states.
SCHIZOPHRENIC Now, here is what happened. When I became schizophrenic, sometime after, I canʼt
remember exactly when I began seeing faces in things, like trees and clouds and in the matrial that the
walls are made of. But it isnʼt a hallucination at all, given the time to show someone I could show them
what I was seeing. Before I was schizophrenic this never happened. Now though, when I look at the
clouds, either the entire thing or part of it makes the shape of a face, weird faces, and they are really
there, once again not a hallucination, you could tell if it was. If you look closely enough at things, like trees
in the dark of night in the street lights, there are faces in them, the shape of the trees, parts of them
anyway form faces. Unfortunately, if my old self was visited by who I am today and my today self tried to
show my old self these faces then I wouldʼve thought that I was crazy, I wouldnʼt have been able to see
them. Something happened. And they are really there; itʼs just like those optical illusions where if you look
at the white part of the picture it makes a completely different image than the black part which most
people pay attention to at first. If you look at the clouds or whatever with the right mind, paying attention
to the right portion of the cloud and paying attention to the right shades, just like the black and white
optical illusions, they make faces a lot of the time. Now someone in their early stages of development will
only see the black part of the picture so to speak, only see certain shades and only certain portions. Itʼs a
quite strange happening. Funny how the mind works isnʼt it? Somebody who is that way wonʼt see them
at all even though they are there, I used to be one of them so I know what it is like; you just donʼt see
them. Go ahead, try it.
woops March 26, 2009, Schizophrenic Forum
THREE The patterns resolve into the three cardinal points of
the face, the two eyes, level and equal in size, forming an
inverted triangle with the mouth centered below. If the
relationship between these points is modified more or less, in
any direction, the face soon looses its faceness. In these new
relationships the familiar features become alien. How did we
evolve this particular configuration of organs near the fruit of
consciousness? One can imagine alternatives: beautiful,
humorous, monstrous.
CELEBRITY DOUBLE You can send a picture of yourself to this site and they
will match you to your celebrity twin. This is an empowering activity and
somehow shows that you are connected to good fortune. Movie stars are born in
the right place at the right time with the correct facial ingredients. The star can be
good looking, not too perfect, not so idealized that they alienate people. The
perfect everyman or woman. And so the theories are spun in an attempt to define
that special something in the winner of the fame lottery, the endlessly multiplied
face on the silver screen. That could have been you if this or that had happened.
EMOTICONS An emoticon is a facial expression pictorially represented by a combination of punctuations,
letters, and/or numbers, employed to accentuate or clarify interpretation of plain text. Emoticon is a
portmanteau word of the English words “emotion” and “icon”. Noted as far back as the mid 19th century,
emoticons began simply as abbreviations; for instance, the use of the number 73 in Morse code to
express “Love and kisses.” However, contemporary understanding and usage of emoticons as
expressions of emotion is traced back to Scott Fahlman of Carnegie Mellon University, when he posted to
a computer science general board on September 19, 1982:
19-Sep-82 11:44
Scott E Fahlman
From: Scott E Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c>
:-)
I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers: :-)
Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things
that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use :-(
SHROUD Before 1353 the origins of the Shroud of Turin are foggy. Since
that time the cloth has been worshipped, scorned, investigated, tested,
photographed, etceteras. Acheiropoieta, image not made by man, this
cloth bears an image of a man thought by many to be Jesus Christ.
According to Didi-Huberman, “... calcinated shrouds in the end they
display only the supposed---but exorbitant---privilege of having been
touched by the divine. They are relics as much as icons. That is why a
capacity to reveal has long been attributed to them, articles that generally
present them- selves as simple cloths. That is why a capacity for
apparition has been attributed to them, articles that offer an appearance
that is literally as effaced as possible...”
MUG SHOT Alphonse Bertillon, director of photographic service of the
Prefecture de Paris, developed the first scientific system for identifying
criminals: Signaletic Anthropometrics. It suggested elaborate
measurements of the body and face in conjunction with what would be
known as the mug shot. Anthropometrics was adopted by police
forces across the Western world, starting in 1888. The system
was proved to be limited because the human error in measuring
techniques resulted in confusing variations. Eventually, finger
prints, blood type, DNA, would augment the mug shot in the
apprehension of the criminal. False eyewitness identification
accounts for most mistaken convictions. The face fleeting when
preserved in the soft clay of memory. Fate is the only way to
explain the falsely identified, arrested, prosecuted, and executed
man.
UGLY! First we see an image of a burned man, mottled skin tones,
approximated features, lacking in detail and covered with skin grafts from other
parts of the body. Then we see a microcephalic gaping. Then an angry celebrity
gesticulating. A few images so primitively retouched with Photoshop that they
may fit into the category of caricature. A low-res JPEG of a man who is able to
distort his face by extending his lips up over the lower half of his face. A man
who has the strange cartoonish ability to push his eyes out of their sockets. A
disorienting double exposure tattoo covering the entire face with satanic
symbols. Looking at the pictures of these unfortunate men reflects upon the
haphazard nature of beauty and ugliness.
ILLUSORY FACE A 2011 experiment at the University of California, San Diego, by Rieth, Lee, Liu, Tian
and Huber, studied how the brain sees illusory faces and letters. It is the “first behavioral account of the
visual template that observers likely used while experiencing illusory detection in these fMRI
experiments.” The fMRI is a machine which makes images of the brain working in real time. During the
testing a person is asked to look at a random pattern of gray blobs and press a button when they see a
face. By synchronizing the button and the random abstract images, coloration can be made between the
images which were associated with the illusory faces. The team also studied illusory letters as well as
faces. The conclusion drawn from the experiment was that
faces can be seen across the entire visual field and that we
see letters in the center of our vision. The illusory face
triggers part of the brain that is used in pattern recognition
- long thought to be important to the evolution of the
species. Without it we would not learn from the stimuli
around us. So keen is our ability to find patterns that it is
more important to the species to make false positives than
not.
Noise images for the experiment were created by
combining dark blobs at random spatial positions. The
randomly positioned blobs were two-dimensional Gaussian
distributions with three different spatial standard
deviations, resulting in three different blob sizes.
Furthermore, the number of randomly positioned blobs
varied inversely with their size. These three spatial scales
were combined to create 480 different noise images that
were 480 × 480 pixels in size. As viewed, these images subtended 14 deg. of visual angle horizontally
and vertically. The same 480 noise images were used for all observers in all experiments except for the
addition of an overlaid oval in Experiment 3. An additional 120 noise images were created for training.
PURE NOISE Random numbers canʼt be generated by a computer because
all formulas for randomness executed by a machine are determinist,
periodic and repeatable. These computer numbers are Pseudo-random
numbers. True random number generators are based on a naturally
occurring source such as the radioactive decay of an isotope or atmospheric
noise interfaced with a computer. As far as science is capable of explaining
these natural phenomena, at the moment of this writing, there is no
discernible pattern in them. When scientists need a truly random set of
numbers they rely on an interface with nature. Hardcore determinists
dispute this arguing that everything is following a pattern since the Big Bang
and humans have yet to figure out how to measure this behavior.
Budgen, L.M.; Live Coals; or, Faces from the Fire. L. Reeve & Co., London, 1967.
Didi-Huberman, G.; Confronting Images: Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of Art. The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park,
2005.
Gombrich, E. H.; Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Prince- ton University Press, Princeton, 1960.
Michell, J.; Simulacra: Faces and Figures in Nature. Thames and Hudson Ltd, London, 1979.