Face perception

The semiotics of the face studies the meaning of the human face in contemporary visual cultures. There are two complementary research foci: widespread practices of face exhibition in social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tinder; and minority practices of occultation, including the mask in anti-establishment political activism (Anonymous) and the veil in religious dressing codes. The meaning of the human face is currently changing on a global scale: through the invention and diffusion of new visual technologies (digital photography, visual filters, as well as software for automatic face recognition); through the creation and establishment of novel genres of face representation (the selfie); and through new approaches to face perception, reading, and memorization (e.g., the ‘scrolling’ of faces on Tinder). Cognitions, emotions, and actions that people attach to the interaction with one’s and others’ faces are undergoing dramatic shifts. In the semiotics of the face, an interdisciplinary but focused approach combines visual history, semiotics, phenomenology, visual anthropology, but also face perception studies and collection and analysis of big data, so as to study the social and technological causes of these changes and their effects in terms of alterations in self-perception and communicative interaction. In the tension between, on the one hand, political and economic agencies pressing for increasing disclosure, detection, and marketing of the human face (for reasons of security and control, for commercial or bureaucratic purposes) and, on the other hand, the counter-trends of face occultation (parents ‘hiding’ their children from the Internet, political activists concealing their faces, religious or aesthetic veils, writers and artists like Bansky or Ferrante choosing not to reveal their identity), the visual syntax, the semantics, and the pragmatics of the human face are rapidly evolving. The semiotics of the face carries on a comprehensive survey of this socio-cultural phenomenon.

Cet ouvrage invite à une lecture critique de la philosophie de Gilles Deleuze en reconstituant le système perspectiviste qui le sous-tend. La thèse qui est défendue est qu'on ne peut comprendre le « perspectivisme » deleuzien qu'au regard de sa théorie de la « structure Autrui », c'est-à-dire de son analyse des interactions avec l'autre. C'est le cas des premiers écrits de Deleuze, marqués par l'influence de Sartre et de Ferdinand Alquié, jusqu'à des textes plus tardifs, coécrits avec Félix Guattari. Chaque fois, l'autre est défini comme « l'expression d'un monde possible », c'est-à-dire comme celui qui perçoit ce que je ne perçois pas moi-même. C'est ce qui justifie une redéfinition d'autrui en termes de « disjonction de perspectives » ou de « perspective alternative ». Afin d'évaluer l'intérêt d'une telle redéfinition, l'auteur présente d'abord le système perspectiviste deleuzien à partir de la théorie de la « structure Autrui » qui le sous-tend. Puis il évalue les apports théoriques de ce modèle-que ce soit par rapport à un certain nombre de références canoniques ou en discutant les principaux commentateurs du corpus deleuzien, dans le champ francophone et anglosaxon. Enfin, il articule la théorie deleuzienne aux différentes approches contemporaines qui se revendiquent de la notion de « perspectivisme » pour en indiquer à la fois les points de contact et d'incompatibilité.

The aim of this research was to study the influence of exposure duration and the spatial-frequency composition of faces in a «same-different» judgment task. Subjects had to match two faces presented successively. The recognition rate depended on the spatial-frequency composition of the target face, and on exposure duration only for high-frequency stimuli. This effect was observed only for durations which were greater than Bloch's psychophysics threshold and only concerned the «same» face pairs. These results are quite consistent with the hypothesis that exposure duration has a differential effect on low and high frequency integration. They are discussed in relation to the single and dual-process models of the «same-different» judgment task (Farell, 1985). Potential consequences on the format of facial representations in memory are proposed

Humans have a special ability to recognize human faces that transcends and is separate from the usual discrimination abilities of the visual system. Schizophrenia patients are known to have an impaired ability to recognize facial affect, a deficit that may stem from a more profound problem of face identification and perception. The special skill of detecting human faces relies upon numerous capabilities, including gestalt perception, "filling-in", and proper gaze scanning, facilities that recent research has shown to be deficient in schizophrenia patients. We therefore hypothesized that schizophrenia patients have a deficit in their perception and structural analysis of human faces that will manifest in their difficulty in detecting faces hidden within neutral pictures. We tested the ability of 35 schizophrenia patients and 32 healthy controls at detecting hidden human faces and animals or animal faces hidden within eight pictures. Overall, the patients recognized fewer items compared to controls, however, it was specifically the human faces in which this difference was significant, suggesting that schizophrenic patients have a specific deficit in their human face recognition system.

Emerging evidence has shown that human thought can be embodied within physical sensations and actions. Indeed, abstract concepts such as morality, time, and interpersonal warmth can be based on metaphors that are grounded in bodily experiences (e.g., physical temperature can signal interpersonal warmth). We hypothesized that social-category knowledge is similarly embodied, and we tested this hypothesis by examining a sensory metaphor related to categorical judgments of gender. We chose the dimension of “toughness” (ranging from tough to tender), which is often used to characterize differences between males and females. Across two studies, the proprioceptive experience of toughness (vs. tenderness) was manipulated as participants categorized sex-ambiguous faces as male or female. Two different manipulations of proprioceptive toughness predictably biased the categorization of faces toward “male.” These findings suggest that social-category knowledge is at least partially embodied.

The present study explores the place of manipulation within the management
of human appearance. It focuses on the theme of the mask thought of as an articial face and on masking understood as communicative and semiotic phenomenon.
Whilst the face is the most important part of the human body where the display of
masks occurs, from the semiotic perspective masking takes on a broader meaning,
which encompasses a wide and heterogenous range of phenomena, transcending the
covering of the human face. What are the functions and types of masks? How does
a mask operate and what is its inner mechanism? What is the role of masking in the
management of appearance and how does it affect the subject? These are all relevant
questions in debating the place of masking in human relations.

Das komplette Buch ist hier als Download verfügbar: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339147401_Gesicht_und_Personlichkeitseindruck
_____
Das Buch war viele Jahre vergriffen. Im Juni 2020 ist eine unveränderte Neuauflage erschienen.
https://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/3939937835/ron0c
_____
Dieses Buch befasst sich mit einem Gegenstand, der uns alle fasziniert, nämlich dem menschlichen Gesicht. Es beschäftigt sich mit den Eindrücken, die wir beim Betrachten eines fremden Gesichts erhalten. Dabei stehen drei Fragen im Blickpunkt: Wie hängen die verschiedenen Eindrücke, die ein Gesicht vermittelt, untereinander zusammen? Inwieweit stimmen verschiedene Beurteiler in ihren Eindrücken überein? Lassen sich Persönlichkeitseindrücke auf physiognomische Merkmale zurückführen?
Der Autor liefert einen umfassenden Überblick über den Stand der Forschung und berichtet über eigene umfangreiche Untersuchungen. Die Fülle der referierten Befunde macht dieses Buch zu einem einzigartigen Nachschlagewerk über die Erkenntnisse der psychologischen Forschung zur Gesichterbeurteilung. Durch die allgemeinverständliche Darstellung wendet sich das Buch nicht nur an das psychologische Fachpublikum, sondern auch an Personen, die beruflich mit Fragen der Personenbeurteilung zu tun haben, sowie an Personen, die sich für Fragen des Aussehens und der physischen Attraktivität interessieren. ______

___

An International, Interdisciplinary Conference Organized by


SILC, Semiotic Interdisciplinary Laboratory on Cultures, Shanghai University and University of Turin

Co-Sponsored by

The Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China

CIRCE, the Interdisciplinary Center for Research on Communication, University of Turin, Italy

The European Research Council (This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 819649 – FACETS).

This article provides a case study highlighting the challenges of assimilating Christian praxis into a multicultural context.  Specifically, three issues are raised with regard to conflict resolution in the Chinese church in the North American context but equally relevant in the Chinese Diaspora.  First, this article argues that the hierarchical nature of Confucian culture and its pursuit of harmony in actuality complicates relationship structures, not only creating, but as well inhibiting their resolution.  Second, while Confucian cultures are drawn to Christianity, Confucian cultures also inhibit Christian reconciliation because “face” issues prevent Chinese from confession and subsequent spiritual transformation.  Third, this article suggests that the means of breaking the stranglehold of Confucianism on genuine reconciliation comes about through creating a corporate culture of confession.  More broadly applied, the case study suggests that cultural vestiges more often than not remain significantly entrenched such that one should never assume that even life-long Christians and leaders operate from a Christian worldview.  Worldview transformation must be intentional, communal, and systemic; and where no cultural parallel exists, new rituals must be created.

The Uncanny Valley, hypothesized by Masahiro Mori in 1970, theorizes about a sensation of discomfort evoked in humans on exposure to anthropomorphic artificial bodies that preserve some mechanical features. The aims of this paper are multiple. Firstly, to confirm the truth of this hypothesis, which has often been the subject of controversy but which has been amply demonstrated in experimental settings and anecdotic evidence. Secondly, to focus the study of the Uncanny Valley on the face, considered as central in the manifestation of the phenomenon. Thirdly, to provide a description of this occurrence as not exclusively a neuroscientific or psychological matter, but also as an issue of extreme semiotic relevance, through the meta-analysis of recent experiments and the treatment of some cinematographic cases known to have generated the Uncanny Valley experience in the audience.

A biometric passport, also known as an e-passport, ePassport or a digital passport, is a combined paper and electronic passport that contains biometric information that can be used to authenticate the identity of travelers. It uses contactless smart card technology, including a microprocessor chip (computer chip) and antenna (for both power to the chip and communication) embedded in the front or back cover, or center page, of the passport. Electronic passports include contactless chip which stores personal data of the passport holder, information about the passport and the issuing institution. In its simplest form an electronic passport contains just a collection of read-only files, more advanced variants can include sophisticated cryptographic mechanisms protecting security of the document and / or privacy of the passport holder. The passport's critical information is both printed on the data page of the passport and stored in the chip. Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is used t...

Arguably, the meaning of the human face is currently changing on a global scale: through the invention and diffusion of new visual technologies (e.g., digital photography, visual filters, as well as software for automatic face recognition); through the creation and establishment of novel genres of face representation (e.g., the selfie); and through new approaches to face perception, reading, and memorization (e.g., the ‘scrolling’ of faces on Tinder). Cognitions, emotions, and actions that people attach to the interaction with one’s and others’ faces might soon be undergoing dramatic shifts. Digital dating social networks are a fundamental arena in orden to understand these new cultural dynamics.

The London Riots of August 2011 were notable for the prominence of CCTV images of offenders in news and social media, as well as in investigation, prosecution and conviction. The Metropolitan Police Service relied on specialist units that had in fact been established in the five years prior to the riots, which had been tasked with acting systematically upon CCTV image evidence: a procedural approach deemed so effective it had been termed the ‘Third Forensics’. This article discusses the significance of this claim and its implications for the justice system. The use of images in the investigations of the riots was highly effective, suggesting claims for substantially improved impact in investigation and prosecution are valid, and earlier scepticism regarding both utility and surveillance society agendas in public area CCTV studies was justified. Systematic procedural use of CCTV footage is not new, however, as demonstrated following riots in Vancouver, Canada, and earlier in Bradford, UK. Furthermore, identification in the ‘Third Forensics’ is eyewitness recognition, not scientifically or technologically comparable to fingerprints or DNA. The article suggests this difference affects risks of prejudice and miscarriages of justice, and the ‘profiling’ of individuals and social categories images appear to represent. The article concludes that while forensic investigation of CCTV images may not meet scientific criteria of a third forensic discipline, it does define a nascent development in police investigation where improvements in procedure have combined with proliferating CCTV systems and social media. This has led to a novel set of circumstances, which raises a number of unexplored issues of such significance that ‘Third Forensics’ is a suitable term to use to define them.

I first coined the term, Self-Media, in my article “Selfies shape the world. Selfies, healthies, usies, felfies" (March 2014, see references p. 14). I had no opportunity at that point to go deeply into the term and its implications. I will try to do that subsequently.
The self and identity are not only issues connected to the selfies. It is connected to the development of media since the renaissance; this is the thesis of the following key-note. The subject, the self, is most clearly exposed in the face, and face and identity becomes important in the media since the renaissance. The selfies is just the newest development is this tradition, which began with the invention of the mirror, the book (printing), and the miniature painting. They all put the subject as both maker and receiver in the center. This was the birth of the modern subject. The development continued throughout the coming centuries. The selfies is the latest invention to discover, explore, visualize and find the self of the subject. The following will therefore naturally focus on the self, the face where the self is most clearly expressed and seen, and the self-media, where the subject can face itself.

There are a few minor typing errors in this version, if they irritate you please read a corrected version here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/236971521/SELF-MEDIA-The-Self-the-Face-the-Media-and-the-Selfies

A revised and extended version of this article is to be found here: https://www.academia.edu/13785723/Self-media._The_self_the_face_the_media_and_the_selfies

Today's pornography constitutes a semiotic laboratory capable of meticulously describing some characteristics of the cultures from which it comes and for which it is intended. In it, the role of the face is preeminent and assumes relevance both from a diegetic and a formal point of view. A face which makes itself a sign and is articulated in a dialectic between the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic axis, finding expression as an aspectual device, establishing a peculiar semiotic procedure of absentia in praesentia, and highlighting an eminently enunciative dimension of the textual genre. Thus a facial semiotics of pornography becomes to all effects a cultural semiotics, which through the exploration of a transversal genre-both in its mainstream and more niche actualizations-produces significant results in defining how cultures of the face, including extrapornographic ones, delineate themselves. The aim of this article is to verify this peculiar facial semiotics through a case history that stretches from traditional to contemporary pornography, also analysing the "facial pornography" website beautifulagony.com and the visual works of some contemporary artists.

Key Words
Male pattern baldness ⋅ androgenetic alopecia ⋅ social perceptions ⋅ face perception ⋅ personality judgments ⋅ socio-cultural aspects of hair and hair loss

Summary
The paper presents a review of the empirical literature on strangers’ perceptions of male pattern baldness (androgenetic alopecia). It also discusses some socio-cultural aspects of hair in general, and hair loss in particular.

Emojis have become a prominent part of human communication, gaining in popularity ever since the first emoticon appeared in the 1980s. People merrily add smiley faces and icons to their messages, and in 2015, the Oxford Dictionary chose an emoji as its Word of the Year. Now, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a massive increase in our use of emojis, as online communication has become an ever-greater part of our everyday lives. But what do emojis do, and why are we so enamoured with them?

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that social perception recruits distinct limited-capacity processing resources that are distinguished by the cerebral hemispheres. To test this hypothesis, social perception efficiency was assessed after relevant hemispheric processing resources were depleted. In Experiment 1 prime faces were unilaterally presented for 30 ms, after which centrally presented target faces were categorised by sex. In Experiment 2 prime faces were unilaterally presented for 80 ms after which centrally presented target faces were categorised by fame. Results showed that sex categorisation was slower after primes were presented in the right versus left visual field, and that fame categorisation was slower after familiar primes were presented in the left versus right visual field. The results support a multiple resource account of social perception in which the availability of resources distributed across the cerebral hemispheres influences social perception.

Infant survival and the development of secure and cooperative relationships are central to the future of the species. In humans, this relies heavily on the evolving early parent–infant social and affective relationship. While much is known about the behavioural and psychological components of this relationship, relatively little is known about the underlying functional neuroanatomy. Affective and social neuroscience has helped to describe the main adult brain networks involved, but has so far engaged very little with developmental findings. In this review, we seek to highlight future avenues for research by providing a coherent framework for describing the parent–infant relationship over the first 18 months. We provide an outline of the evolving nature of the relationship, starting with basic orienting and recognition processes, and culminating in the infant's attainment of higher socio-emotional and cognitive capacities. Key social and affective interactions, such as communication, cooperative play and the establishment of specific attachments propel the development of the parent–infant relationship. We summarise our current knowledge of the developing infant brain in terms of structure and function, and how these relate to the emergent abilities necessary for the formation of a secure and cooperative relationship with parents or other caregivers. Important roles have been found for brain regions including the orbitofrontal, cingulate, and insular cortices in parent–infant interactions, but it has become clear that much more information is needed about the developmental time course and connectivity of these regions.

Scope of the book:
This book focusses on the technical concepts of deep learning and its associated branch Neural Networks for the various dimensions of image processing applications. The proposed volume intends to bring together researchers to report the latest results or progress in the development of the above-mentioned areas. Since there is a deficit of books on this specific subject matter, the editors aim to provide a common platform for researchers working in this area to exhibit their novel findings.
Topics of Interest:
This book solicits contributions, which include the fundamentals in the field of Deep Artificial Neural Networks and Image Processing supported by case studies and practical examples. Each chapter is expected to be self-contained and to cover an in-depth analysis of real life applications of neural networks to image analysis.

Vi è un frangente misterioso nella storia e nella genesi del senso, quello in cui da un fondo insignificante emergono uno scarto, una scintilla, una singolarità. Lo “scevà”, termine preso a prestito dalla grammatica ebraica, designa lo sforzo di trattenere, nelle maglie della semiotica, questo istante paradossale, il primo baluginare della significanza, lo sbocciare del segno, l’affiorare del linguaggio. Non v’è altro modo per farlo che per ravvicinamenti progressivi, i quali nella foggia di una pietra, nella forma di una montagna, nella silhouette di un oggetto, nelle pieghe di un tessuto, fino all’abisso della materia disfatta lascino intravedere, all’improvviso ma inesorabilmente, altrettante para-semiotiche, adombramenti del senso: il profilo di un corpo, l’effigie di un volto, il destino di un’esistenza, la minaccia della violenza, ma anche la promessa di una salvezza possibile. “Scevà” è il tentativo di dire la forma nell’amorfo, la figura nell’informe, il messaggio nel silenzio, il senso nella materia, l’ombra nel buio, il sacro nel vuoto, il sussurro nel silenzio, la salvezza nella catastrofe.

ATMs (Automatic Teller Machine) are becoming widely used in today's world because they are easy to use and offer convenience. However, today's ATM technology comes with some security risks such as the theft and misuse of cards, the possibility of losing a card, and forgetting PIN numbers. A growing number of frauds committed against automatic teller machines over the last decade motivated us to use biometrics to ensure the accuracy and security of personal identification. In this paper, we describe a biometric fingerprint and face recognition system that can replace ATM cards and PINs. The transaction is successful when fingerprint, OTP, and face match. If the fingerprint does not match, the customer is guided to enter the aadhaar number. Similarly, if face matching fails, the customer is given an option to answer the question. Here aadhaar number and correct answer to the question must be entered correctly to proceed. Aadhaar number entry and question & answer options are mainly provided for those who are unable to access the system because of damage to their physical attributes (finger and face).

Ta Moko is the art of the Maori tattoo. It was an integral aspect of Maori society and is currently seeing resurgence in popularity. In particular it is linked with ancestry and a sense of “Maori” pride. Ta Moko is traditionally worn by Maori males on the buttocks and on the face, while Maori women wear it on the chin and lips. With curvilinear lines and spiral patterns applied to the face with a dark pigment, the full facial Moko creates a striking appearance. Given our reliance on efficiently encoding faces this transformation could potentially interfere with how viewers normally process and recognise the human face (e.g. configural information). The pattern’s effects on recognising identity, expression, race, speech, and gender are considered, and implications are drawn, which could help wearers and viewers of Ta Moko understand why sustained attention (staring) is drawn to such especially unique faces.