Processing Beauty

As a follow up to my earlier posts on the Dove Ads, beauty and perception I have to say this Dove commercial continues to raise interesting questions about our perception of beauty. The fact that a company in the 'beauty' industry is raising it and making it part of their promotional campaign is also interesting. Is it like politicians who make it a point to run against Washington, but whose job if they win makes them part of Washington or is this about corporations becoming more socially responsible?

Illustration Symposium

Steve Guranaccia is putting together a terrific event at Parson's, Illustration Today that highlights what is new in illustration. The lineup looks great, definitely worth the trip, especially since it's coinciding with the American Illustration party on the 9th.

Speaking of symposiums, it's been a busy fall for me after the thesis show. I went to the University of Victoria's interarts event in September. Saw some great speakers, and some creative installations. I particularly liked Jamie Jewett's presentation of Restless, a poem interpreted into dance that he choreographed.

Just a few days after getting back from that, I headed off to Vienna for Scope II, Sites and Subjects, a symposium on cultural heritage. Homi Bhabha and Peter Weibel were wonderful as keynotes, and had a very interesting follow up discussion. Churchill Madikida from South Africa had a very interesting talk about the Constitution Hill Museum. He talked about the meaning of place historically, and how buildings carry with them the events and cultures of the past, which are not something people want to remember. What do you do with monuments that are left behind by colonial occupations?

Beyond the Uncanny Valley

Today's NYTimes article Cyberface talked about a new technology for facial motion capture. Importantly, the system created by Image Metrics does not rely on sensors attached to the face, or phosphorescent paint, which can make actors uncomfortable. This system simply uses the video image of the actor's performance to drive expressions.

I think this is an important step forward, it seems able to leap Masahiro Mori's Uncanny Valley by capturing truly life-like movement. As 3D approaches photorealism, the movement itself becomes increasingly important so that we believe we are watching a real human, and not a pseudo human or zombie-like creature. The previous strategies of making sure that characters remain in the 'art' portion of our brain, may give way to characters that can be seen as truly human.