The Philosophy of the Face and 20th Century Literature and Art

This dissertation explores the importance of the human face in modern literature, philosophy, and art. Meaning is a physiognomy, wrote Wittgenstein--quite literally, if somewhat cryptically--in the Philosophical Investigations. My project takes this remark seriously and begins, in chapters one and two, by reading Wittgenstein\u27s discussion of aspect-seeing alongside recent work in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind in order to explain how we perceive mentality in the appearance of a human face. I then trace the surprising ways in which our ability to understand facial expressions informs not only the way we understand language, but also other minds and the concept of personhood itself. Chapters three and four extend these findings into an analysis of visual portraiture, focusing on the paintings of Francis Bacon. Regarding the sense of injury often associated with Bacon\u27s violently distorted likenesses, I ask why such magical feelings arise at all with respect to images of human faces. Reading Wittgenstein along with Gombrich and Wollheim, I find that the mind naturally responds to images of faces as expressive of mentality: we not only see faces in images but also to an extent see the images as persons. My final chapter looks into the ethics of physiognomy, asking what difference it makes whether we see the mind as a private substance or, as John Ashbery has suggested, a visible core. This chapter reads two narratives about faces that dramatize the solipsistic consequences of a Cartesian commitment to mental privacy: that of the faceless woman in Rilke\u27s Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge and the Magistrate\u27s dreams about the tortured woman in Coetzee\u27s Waiting for the Barbarians . I next consider Levinas\u27 ethics of the face, an ambivalent critique of Husserlian phenomenology that tries, but ultimately fails, to escape this Cartesian predicament. In the end, the convergence of ethics and physiognomy may explain the face\u27s importance to the modern imagination: perhaps, as Wittgenstein\u27s writings suggest, faces grip us so because they call upon the same powers of pattern recognition that enable us to grasp the reality of other minds and moral values as well

Skin Portraiture: Embodied Representations in Contemporary Art

In recent years, human skin has been explored as a medium, metaphor, and milieu. Images of and objects made from skin flesh out the critical role it plays in experiences of embodiment such as reflexivity, empathy, and relationality, expanding conceptions of difference. This project problematizes the correlation between the appearance of the epidermis and a person’s identity. By depicting the subject as magnified, fragmented, anatomized patches of skin, “skin portraiture”—a sub-genre of portraiture I have coined—questions what a portrait is and what it can achieve in contemporary art. By circumnavigating and obfuscating the subject’s face, skin portraiture perforates the boundaries and collapses the distance between bodies. Feminist, this project pays attention to skin portraits made by women. To better understand skin, each chapter is focused on a particular skin metaphor. In the preface, a consideration of skin and its representation leads into an investigation of the skin-as-self metaphor in the introduction (chapter one). Framing the skin as an organ we dwell in, the skin-as-home metaphor (chapter two) explores touch and its role in experiences of empathy. Turning to the idea that skin is a garment, the skin-as-clothing metaphor (chapter three) fleshes out relationality and a queering of skin. Tackling race and skin colour, the skin-as-screen metaphor (chapter four) investigates the embodied experiences of mixed-raced, multicultural women. Addressing a loss of difference at the level of skin within bioengineering, the skin-as-technology metaphor (chapter five) considers the collapse of differences between bodies and species within bio-art

Embodiment and the Arts: Views from South Africa

Embodiment and the Arts: Views from South Africa presents a diversity of views on the nature and status of the body in relation to acting, advertisements, designs, films, installations, music, photographs, performance, typography, and video works. Applying the methodologies of phenomenology, hermeneutic phenomenology, embodied perception, ecological psychology, and sense-based research, the authors place the body at the centre of their analyses. The cornerstone of the research presented here is the view that aesthetic experience is active and engaged rather than passive and disinterested. This novel volume offers a rich and diverse range of applications of the paradigm of embodiment to the arts in South Africa.Publishe

A Cognitive Approach to the Earliest Art

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Patterns of Discrimination: On Photographic Portraits as Documents of Truth in Automated Facial Recognition

Denne avhandlingen tar for seg fotografiers rolle i treningen av ansiktsgjenkjenningsalgoritmer, samt i selve den tekniske prosessen hvor ansikter analyseres. Gjennom en lesning av tre ulike kunstprosjekter som på ulike måter anvender eksisterende ansiktsgjenkjenningsteknologi til å problematisere denne praksisen, etablerer jeg hvordan ulike fordommer – særlig hva angår fotografiets status som objektiv representasjon av verden – påvirker systemenes evne til å analysere ansikter. De aktuelle prosjektene er ImageNet Roulette (2019) av Trevor Paglen og AI-forsker Kate Crawford, How do you see me? (2019) av Heather Dewey-Hagborg, og Spirit is a Bone (2013-15) av kunstner-duoen Broomberg & Chanarin. Problemstillingen som oppgaven forsøker å besvare er som følger: hva kan disse kunstprosjektene fortelle publikum om ansiktsgjenkjenningsteknologi som praksis, og hvilken rolle spiller digitalt fotografi som slike systemers bindeledd til den analoge verden «utenfor» dem selv? Som svar på dette tar avhandlingen for seg selve den tekniske arkitekturen og hvordan den legger føringer for ansiktsgjenkjenningssystemers operasjoner alt i designprosessen. I tillegg diskuteres ansiktsgjenkjenning fra et historisk perspektiv, hvor forsøk på å knytte juridisk identitet til kroppen gjennom fotografi spores helt tilbake til mediets oppfinnelse på 1800-tallet.Kunsthistorie mastergradsoppgaveKUN350MAHF-KU

Local Portraiture

Photography is clearly not a mirror of daily life: that images are constructions is especially obvious in19th-century studio portrait photography. This book explores how indigenous Iranian photographers constructed their own realities in contrast to how foreign photographers constructed Iranians’ realities. Through an in-depth comparative visual analysis of 19th-century Iranian portrait photography and Persian painting, the author arrives at the insight that aesthetic preferences correlate with socio-cultural habits and practices in writing, reading and looking. Subsequently, she advocates for a place in a global history of photography for those unknown, local photo histories (such as the Iranian one) and for the indigenous photographers who produced them

Science in the Public Eye: Communicating and Selling Science Through Images

Scientific visuals designed to capture the attention of nonscientist audiences appear everywhere — from magazine covers to Internet blogs, from billboards to the Discovery Channel — and yet they have not received the critical attention they deserve. Situated at the crossroads of the rhetoric of science, communication studies, visual design theory, and the still emerging field of visual rhetoric, this dissertation seeks to shed light on the persuasive function of visuals in communicating science to non-experts. Occupying a grey area between scientific visualizations and art, the visuals used to communicate science to nonscientists should be classified, I argue, as scientific advertisements. Their purpose is to sell a positive and supportive attitude toward science, and since this need for support has existed since the scientific revolution, scientific advertisements have existed in different guises at least since the seventeenth century. Their form, however, differs, depending on the available technology and modes of representation. In this dissertation I explore how such images as frontispieces, portraits, magazine covers, and aestheticized visualizations have contributed to the legitimization of science across temporal and cultural boundaries by influencing public attitudes towards scientists and their research. This project addresses the concern surrounding the public's current disengagement from science by considering whether science can be sold visually in a more responsible way

Representations of facial expressions since Darwin

Darwin’s book on expressions of emotion was one of the first publications to include photographs (Darwin, 1872). The inclusion of expression photographs meant that readers could form their own opinions and could, like Darwin, survey others for their interpretations. As such, the images provided an evidence base and an ‘open source’. Since Darwin, increases in representativeness and realism of emotional expressions come from the use of composite images, colour, multiple views and dynamic displays. Research on understanding emotional expressions has been aided by the use of computer graphics to interpolate parametrically between different expressions and to extrapolate exaggerations. This review tracks the developments in how emotions are illustrated and studied and considers where to go next.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe