0.1 The Face of Tomorrow
The Face of Tomorrow is an exploration of human identity as affected by the forces of globalization. The thesis assumes that if we can sample enough people in a city right now, and that if we can then mix those people together with the aid of the computer, to create one new male and one new female, we will be looking at the future face of that city.
0.2 The Process
We take 100 photos of people, more or less at random, in the street. Using these photos as raw material, we composite a protypical face by morphing male or female faces two at a time to create a new face several generations into the future.
0.3 Globalization
The project uses all the tools of the modern economy – distributed work across several time zones, outsourcing to take advantage of cost disparities, an open source model that allows input from contributors, and of course the internet itself as a medium of display and exchange.
0.4 The Open Source Model
The Face of Tomorrow uses an open source model, like the computer software Linux. This means that its source code (its internal logic, assumptions and methodologies) are open for inspection, challenge and change by its programmers (people involved in the taking of photos, in the production of the morphs and in the exhibition of the work). If a better system can be conceived within the practical and economic constraints of the project, then the assumptions and methodologies are open to change accordingly.
0.5 The Goal
There is no goal. The purpose of the project is simply to record what is there within the parameters defined within the source code. I believe an artist, like a scientist, should simply try to record the world as it is without imposing a morality or belief system. Patterns will emerge from out of this data. How one chooses to interpret these patterns is up to the individual. For me, the project has a certain meaning. The patterns I see emerging are beauty and integrity, and an underlying connectedness between all people. Thus for me, The Face of Tomorrow can be perceived as a utopian project – the projection of a future where race or individual identity are no longer as important or as divisive as they are today. For someone else the project might represent something else - perhaps even the diametric opposite.
Photoshoot Instructions
1.1 The Location
Choose one location – one part of town – a specific neighborhood, a university, a square, a particular street. This place might be touristic, it might be very local. The choice is yours. In some ways it is nice if the place represents your city, but this is not essential, as each location is only a reflection of that place itself. To obtain a face for a whole city we will need several locations around that city. The main thing is that the place must be busy. You might need to ask 400 or 500 people if they want their photo taken, in order to get 100 photos. So there must be a lot of people around. Generally people are very helpful if you explain quickly that you need help with an art project. In some places 90% of people will agree, in others only 15 or 20%.
1.4 The Equipment
You need a digital camera. Set resolution to 3 Megapixels (2 megapixel minimum). Use Automatic shooting mode or Portrait mode if the camera has such a setting. Set up the camera on a tripod. Most important, make sure flash is OFF for the shoot.
1.5 The Shoot
Set yourself up in a place that is just off the main traffic flow. Test for evenness of light. Do not shoot people in direct sunlight. Usually I shoot under an awning with the light as even as possible. Be aware of any reflecting colors which can influence the skintones. Place the color swatch to the left of the subject’s head. Adjust camera up and down on tripod as necessary and shoot. You will need someone to assist you to make contact with people while you look after the camera. The more people you can get to help out the better – 5 or 6 is ideal and will make the shoot very quick.
1.6 The People on the Street
Try as much as possible to select whoever comes along. Whoever is in the place represents the future potential of that place. So take photos of ALL people – tourists, locals, businesspeople, beggars, ANYBODY who is there who will let you take their photo.
Inevitably it is easier to approach younger people. Men are also almost always more present on the street and are also easier to convince (in general) than women. If you are working in a city that has an ethnically diverse population, try and select a representative cross section of people. Sometimes this may not be possible, as some ethnic/social groups react differently to having their photos taken. These are all problems within the nature of the shoot but in many ways these are merely reflections of underlying tensions within the structure of globalization itself. The project is a reflection of these forces of globalization and is not trying to moralize any particular thesis. It is just trying to find out what is there and to then extrapolate that into the future according to its own internal logic and methodology. Do not seek out difference, diversity, beauty, or any other trait, just go with the flow! Follow your instinct. And most important, HAVE FUN!
1.7 Technicalities
You can collect people’s names and email addresses while you are doing the shoot. And we can send them the results when ready. Don’t forget to hand out the THANK YOU cards after they have had their photo taken.
2.0 The Selection Process
2.1 Background
Early research in Istanbul showed that the differences within a given population are remarkably small. Taking a sample of 100 men, and at that time simply layering the faces (as Galton had done over 100 years ago) in 10 batches of 10 faces, the resulting 10 new composites all bore a striking resemblance to each other. There was definitely an underlying similarity even with such a small sample of individuals. In batches of 20, the faces were virtually identical to each other and identical to a composite face consisting of all 100 individuals.
2.2 The Morphing Process
The layering effect proved the thesis worked. I then perfected the technique with a morphing program which is much more accurate allowing me to use fewer faces to achieve the same results. Manually I take over 120 points on each face and map them to the corresponding points on the next face. The computer then averages all the lines and colors and we have a morph of the two which has 50% of the characteristics of each individual face. Taking two male faces at a time, or two female faces at a time, we can create a second generation of composite faces. Then taking the second generation composite faces, again two at a time, we create a third generation. And so on. The nature of this breeding process means that any number that we choose to work with must be a power of two. Ie: it must be 2, 4, 8, 16 or 32. With 64 or 128 individuals, cities start to approach a human type and the end result is no longer interesting - except as a manifestation of this phenomena. This is something that has also been explored by several other artists, most notably Nancy Burson, so there is need to retread this territory.
2.3 Sixteen Degrees of Separation
The nature of society, in which inevitably, even in the most advanced liberal democracies, there are more men than women on the street, means that in a typical photoshoot we get about one third females and two thirds males. We can’t always rely on there being 32 females, so it ends up that the number that it is convenient to work with is 16. From early research this was found to be sufficient to give an idea of the future face of that location with a high degree of consistency. In fact, we know that we have a representative face because the male and the female face for a particular location, always end up looking like brother and sister, even though each is made up of a batch of entirely unrelated individuals.
2.4 The Face of Tomorrow
The Face of Tomorrow is a youthful face. As an artist I wanted a young adult face that represents the hope, energy and vitality of the future. I’m not saying that there will not be old people in the future - although advances in genetics make this a real possibility- I am simply making an artistic choice to represent the future face of a place with the face of a young adult. Right now 25 is the average age of all people on the planet and 25 gives a youthful adult face with sufficient development to be interesting in that we can determine a certain amount of character and personality even through the relatively homogenizing effect of the morphing process.
Also, by working with the younger generation, we are in effect skipping a generation or two to arrive at the future faster if you like. The younger generation already represents the future more in that the mixing effect that occurs over time, has already happened more than with the older generations.
2.5 The Selection Process
What this means is that I have taken 16 males and 16 females as the number to work with, and I have chosen to select this batch of 32 using a median age of 25. The babies, children under 15 and older people who are not selected for morphing, are still critically important to the process as they can determine the finetuning of the selection in that the ethnic makeup of the 32 selected should reflect the overall diversity of the total sample.
2.6 In Practice
Take the 100 individuals (you may have slightly more than 100 and this is fine) and divide them into male and female. Line them up according to age. Using 25 as a starting point, work around this age to select 16 representative faces. Use 15 as a lower minimum age. The upper maximum age will depend on your sample. Take into account the overall ethnic makeup of the whole sample, and select a batch of males and females with the same age composition as each other.
2.7 Bias, Beauty and Natural Selection
At every step in the process there is human bias. The selection of individuals on the street by the photographer will inevitably result in bias, as will the final selection of the individuals to be morphed. If the photographer is male, he might have more of a rapport with men, if the photographer is in her twenties, she might have more of a rapport with younger people and of course if the photographer is from a particular ethnic group, he or she may have more of a rapport with people from that group. There is also always the tendency to “get the pretty girl” or “cute boy”. Even though the instructions are to be as neutral as possible in the selection process, human bias creeps in. This bias extends to the people who create the morphs in India. Initially, even though they were using computer software, the faces that came back were all Indian-looking with large Bollywood eyes like the hand-painted posters one sees on the streets in India where even the western movie stars start to look Indian. This bias has been “corrected” by me and now the eyes look “right” but maybe I am just putting my own bias back in. It is difficult to know what we really see because even the camera itself has bias built in. I had an interesting discussion with a man from the Smithsonian Institute who explained that some 50 years ago a photographer working in Africa realized he had to place a yellow lens in front of the camera in order for it to record black skin tones. Bias was built in to the very film itself, which was calibrated for white skin. Finally there is the bias built into the systems of art production and consumption and access to the internet. Art, by and large, is a middle class practice. Thus the people who stumble across the project and choose to participate via the art world are not necessarily representative of the total community. Likewise people who have access to the internet, and stumble across the project via this means, are not representative of the total community . Ultimately all these biases and choices are just more manifestations of the forces behind globalization – a speeded up version of natural selection if you like. By outsourcing all aspects of the Face of Tomorrow and making it an open source project, all I can do is make sure that the biases are not mine. Again, I am not drawing any conclusions from this, I am just trying to hold a mirror up to the world.
2.8 Glossary
Individual : an individual, male or female, whose photo is taken on the street
Composite : a face consisting of several individual faces
Morph : a term for combining, with the aid of a computer, one face with another face, so that the resulting face has 50% of the characteristics of the two individual faces.
Download 1 : Source code (pdf)
Download 2 :
thank you cards (pdf)
Download 3 : color swatch (pdf)
Download 4 :
image composition diagram (pdf)
Download 5 :
explanation sheet (pdf)
Download 6 : legal agreement (pdf)
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