Reality?

[fritchie]

Here's an image from yesterday's BBC website (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3207462.stm). Is this a real or a constructed face?

The article didn't give much detail - that's the nature of these web reports, but it was authored by Jo Twist, BBC News Online technology reporter, and it credits a new London exhibition “Perfectly Real: Women in Bits and Bytes”. I guess the title provides a clue.

[fritchie]

What about this one? Same source.

[obseq]

I just noticed this thread buried with the rest.

There is no doubt that these examples are very impressive renderings but if I may offer another bit to consider...


"The world is already there--why repeat it?"

--Dziga Vertov

That addresses to some extent, the artistic implications but clearly leaves that classic notion that measures the limits of "science." We all know that this sort of technology is definately a precursor to some commercial/industrial application and not just an excercise in if/then logic...This has always been my problem with "modern science."


Thanks for the thought-provoking link, Fritchie.

[fritchie]

Glad you brought this back to the fore, obseq. Yes, these images could be real people, scanned from life, but I think the import of the article is that they weren’t. People over the years have said pretty much the same about photography, but I think the art-world consensus is that it’s the person behind the camera, and not the camera, that is the creative force.

I see these images the same way. Computers used this way are tools for creative individuals, and they make the job much easier, just as tig welders, not to mention industrial foundries, make metal working a tad easier than it was in circa 1000 A.D. (??) When ironworking first produced usable material.

[sculptor]

....make metal working a tad easier than it was in circa 1000 A.D. (??) When ironworking first produced usable material.

as/re Homer----some of the combatants at troy had iron spear or arrow heads...ergo 1100bc

[fritchie]

as/re Homer----some of the combatants at troy had iron spear or arrow heads...ergo 1100bc

I knew this would come up, so I checked it today. Hammered objects of iron first were made by the Hittites of modern Syria and Iraq about 1400 B.C. I was referring to the harder alloys of steel, which first were made in Damascus, modern Iraq, some time about 800 to 1000 A.D., I think. I haven’t been able to find the earliest dates of Damascus steel.