Face, portrait, mask – using a parameterised system to explore synthetic face space

New technological tools are allowing the authorship of computer generated faces that can easily move between very realistic, to cartoon-like, to painterly or even iconified – both in depiction and movement. These systems are beginning to allow artists, scientists and scholars to explore the notion of ‘face space’, whether as a realistic emotive character, an artistic portrait or symbolic facial mask, in new ways, that give a deeper understanding of how faces work as an expressive and communicative medium. We overview our computer facial suite of tools, which using a hierarchical parameterisation approach, has been used as a comprehensive frame work in several interdisciplinary, industrial and cognitive science applications.