Alexa Wright
Face Value is an installation in two parts: an interactive computer work, and an exhibition of 11 black and white portrait photographs.
A computer monitor displays an image of a face. This is an average created by morphing the faces of sixty men and women of a variety of ages and ethnic origins. As the viewer sits in front of the monitor, his or her face appears superimposed over the average. The work is activated when the viewer lines up his or her face with the average and presses a button. This captures an image of his or her face. The computer then calculates various differences between the individual and the average, and prints out a 'character reading' of that person based on their facial measurements. Inevitably if someone smiles, or turns sideways for example, they will receive a distorted reading. This fallibility is an important part of the work, which is not intended to assert the validity of any physiognomic system, but rather to invite people to consider the mechanisms they use to read character from one another's appearance.
Each of the eleven portrait photographs is composed of features taken from several different visitors to the Exploratorium museum - with permission - I set up a portrait studio during my residency there. Facial features were then extracted and assembled according to various face reading systems. Descriptions of the characters are also displayed as a list and, without the knowledge that these are all fabricated portraits, audience members are invited to match a description with a face.
Made in collaboration with Professor Alf Linney at University College London.
Commissioned by the Exploratorium Museum of Science, Technology and Innovation, San Francisco and supported by a grant from the Gulbenkian Trust.
