Face-to-Face

Reflections on the process of making faces:

I’m glad we were required to make something with our hands for this collaboration, but maybe not for obvious or expected reasons.

A lot of collaboration can happen via tools like Google Docs.  And it’s a viable form of collaboration, absolutely.  Night owls, such as myself, can work on a project without inconveniencing people who might be early risers--and vice versa.  Even if I’m co-editing a document at the same time with someone else, I can be at home in my pajamas while the other person is elsewhere.  No need to put on a face (make-up or otherwise).  Time and space can be fractured while still cohering via the document.  I can prioritize according to what is most convenient for me.  And Things. Still. Get. Done.

But it’s kind of lonely.

After all, with online collaboration, I only get to interact with my fellow collaborators via my words.  And the little stand-ins for faces and facial expressions that are variously known as smileys, emoticons, or emoji.  That is, assuming that my collaborators are familiar with the emoticons that I'm using in the first place.  Otherwise... -_-;

With this project though, I was able to spend two or so hours with the other two members of my group while we made things.  Even though we’re part of the same cohort and we live pretty close together, we almost never spend time with each other outside of the classroom.  This project gave us a chance to catch up with each other during our busy lives--during the downtime of waiting for water to boil or after cleaning up.  Face-to-face, we got to make faces with each other.

Reflections on the faces themselves:

What’s in a face?

Flour, water, computer paper strips.

Pixels, bits and bytes, RGB systems.

Molecules and metals and oils, oh my.  

We made three faces: one of paper mache, a 3D computer model (represented in a 2D way as a digital image file), and the layer of paint and powder make-up on a group member's face.  

Paper mache mask on top of aluminum foil covering a human face, anchored around the head with an eyemask.  Note the hole left for the nostrils so our model could breathe during the paper mache process.

The paper mache face captured a version of the past.  Due to the material realities of paper mache and the need for a human being to breathe continuously, we lay down the paper mache over aluminum foil that covered the face but had a hole for the nostrils.  That way, we could remove the mask and it would maintain its shape while it took the four hours or so it needed to dry fully.  So the mask is still her face.  But it's her face mediated by a sheet of aluminum, which does not lay flat against the multi-curved surfaces of the face no matter how much you try to make it do so.  Eventually we needed to secure the edges with a make-shift rubber band in the form of a sleeping mask.

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The 3D computer model also captured a version of the past but can be used as a representation of the possible future.  Age progression photos in cases of missing persons are probably the most well-known usage of this type of representation, though their efficacy has been called into question.  After all, extrapolation of the future from the past must assume that past conditions continue into the future.  Unexpected events often don't play nice with algorithms that require regularity and continuity in order to produce an output.

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Close-up photograph of an open eyeshadow case.
Note the eyeshadow powder that coats the mirror and plastic frame of the case.

The face with make-up freshly applied is a face ever present.  Make-up generally doesn't stick around all day, despite attempts by cosmetics manufacturers to the contrary.  It melts, it collects in grooves, it gets eaten and smeared and rubbed off.  It doesn't just rest passively on the surface of the face.  It literally changes the face, particles interacting with particles.  The made-up face is a particularly visible instantiation of a face in process, a face that requires periodic maintenance, a becoming face.

EC