Inkober 2018 Day 2

Maybe I Just Like It This Way:

As I already pedantically mentioned, for at least a couple of  reasons, lately I’ve been thinking a lot about portraiture, heads and faces. 

At any rate, there was a whole lot of tangential research on many topics ranging from the neurobiology of face processing to the cultural implications of emerging facial recognition software to the world history of non-fine art appearances of the human head- vents, puppets, death masks, shrunken heads...etc, etc, etc.

So it’s going to be “Headtober” I guess... 

And probably just my own effigy, since I can’t in good conscience abuse other people...(except maybe my kids...)

This image is based on the clinical observation that people actually can recognize upside down faces better if the eyes are reversed to right side up. If you doubt the creepiness of this situation, look at the image upside down.

Our brains also have a lot of trouble recognizing faces in unusual light situations- i.e. lighting from below is very troubling. Also creepy.

There is evidence that human brains  mostly like to recognize faces by their overall patterns of light and dark...though maybe once a face is upside down and the pattern is unfamiliar, it helps to have the eyes be out of pattern. 

I’m not a neuroscientist, I just like to read about them, and then prattle on endlessly to folks in my class about it.