Turn and face
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008There are some of us that have a little trouble recognising faces… I can walk past my father in the street and neither of us would recognise each other. Indeed, this happened on Saturday. The reason being that we’re both more than a little short sighted, and yet we both refuse to wear glasses.
I’m sure for my Dad that’s because he doesn’t like to think of people seeing any defects in him… for me it’s because I quite like the world in soft focus.
Still, it can be rectified if either of us were to wear glasses. It’s not like we have prosopagnosia – sometimes called ‘face blindness’.
If you are going to be blind of any sort, I always assumed it would be in the face… unless you keep your eyes somewhere else.
For the rest of us, caricatures provide an interesting example of how we recognise faces. They technically look nothing like the person – the scale and proportions are all out – but somehow they manage to convey all of the important data. You can study the reverse using anti-caricatures:
And on the other side we have people that see faces everywhere. I’m not sure there’s a medical term for this, perhaps we should invent one.
The odd thing is, most of us have a terrible lack of ability when it comes to our own faces. How many of you have looked at an old school photograph – you know you are in it, why else would you have a copy – and failed to find yourself with ease?
I know I’ve even scared myself, catching a glimpse in a mirror as I walked through a room… seing my own reflection as another person.
An art teacher friend once told me that if you get a class to draw self-portraits, the end result looks more like the face of the person sat opposite than it does the artist.
I don’t know whether this is a form of defence mechanism, stopping you from freaking out when you realise you’ve become old, or if it is some way of us preparing for the day when our clones wander about in the same town as us…
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Most likely…
Nice use of the quote there too, I think that’s the first time a commenter has used that.
I don’t know if Rowan Atkinson was the best choice for that exercise. He’s just funny looking.
I do a pretty accurate self portrait, noting that I can’t draw worth a damn so the results have to be graded on kind of a curve anyway.
I was looking at the back of an album cover the other day and I noticed that my face is very similar in structure to Elliot Easton from The Cars. At least the bottom part, the eyes and forehead are mostly obscured by his sunglasses.
Would you ever consider doing a look-a-like gig?
Steve, a friend of mine has recently grown a beard of epic status… and with a cap and cigar is the spitting image of Castro. I can’t convince him to do anything though… I want to shoot some grainy footage of Castro playing golf, but he’s not up for it.
Looking at your blog picture and one of Mr easton, I’d say you’re not too far off, you’d have to wear some sort of nose prosthesis though.
Tell you what, if you do, I’ll don a black wig and go on a brief starvation diet to appear as Ric Ocasek.
*now has the song ‘Just what I Needed’ playing in head*
There’s a medical term for everything. Seeing faces in objects is called Pareidolia. Now if those faces start talking to you, you’ve got something else entirely…
I also have bad bad eyesight, only for me it’s less of a ’soft focus’ and more of a ‘random splattering of color vaguely resembling a geometric object.’
Good show sir. I really couldn’t find that one out. Pareidolia.
Ahh, I see (or not as it happens) you’re from the Monet school of vision…
Reminds me, I should do a post about artists with visual disabilities, or differences. I know a few that are colourblind as well as a blind painter…
“There’s a medical term for everything” – mediencyclophilia.
Didn’t a number of the Impressionists have cataracts, causing the world to look, to them, much the way it did in their paintings? I’m sure I read that some where. And near-sightedness has been used to explain Van Gogh’s representation of stars in starry night.
Monet is the only one I know of… but my art history is sadly lacking… and since I’m teaching myself I started at the modern day and have been working backwards… not got to the impressionists yet, still fumbling around in the 20th century.
I like that, that Mr Van Gogh’s physical limitations enabled him to paint in a particular style in a completely honest fashion.
Yeah… that’s about the way I’ve done it, though I’ve skipped back and forth the styles and art I really like, impressionism is high on the list. But Surrealism’s higher.
I often see a reflection of myself in a window or a mirror in a crowded room and think;
“…They’re a bit ugly…”
And they I realise it is me.
And I laugh
Wow, way to be harsh on yourself…
Though I’m sure most people react this way when confronted with their own image.
I can’t take photographs… and by that I mean I look horrible in them, distorted, almost ‘Ring’ style (Why do so many Japanese horror films invove missing faces?). It’s one of the reasons I don’t bother putting a photograph on my site, there’s no point in giving out a misleading image.
Still, it makes those days when you look in the mirror and go, ‘looking pretty fine today’ all the more worth it.
i have mirrors in my house for that!
“…or if it is some way of us preparing for the day when our clones wander about in the same town as us…”
Ever read Never Let Me Go? Any thing’s possible!
Not yet, it is on my list though. Ms Em is by far the better fiction reader out of the two of us. Her library is full of such novels which I occasionally dip into.
I’ll try to read it over the coming weekend (it looks short enough).
Right now, I am reading an extended dissertation on classical mythology… starting with the Greeks. It’s all incest, castration and one-hundred armed offspring… the birth of western civilisation.
Nice. Let me know what you think of it. And when you’re done, you’ll get the pun. What fun!
There are some of us, myself included,
that see only what we expect to see.
If don’t expect to see you in a given
situation, I’d likely not notice you.
Others say about me: “Sera’s in her
own world” and I guess that’s true.
Yup, that’s definitely me too.
I started in the early millions of BCs and am working my way up. Chu-grobpak the Lesser drew the finest woolly yak in woolly yak blood you may never see.