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 -in both 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 the concept of faces work as an expressive and communicative medium. We overview our computer facial suite of tools, which using a hierarchical parameterization approach, gave been used as a comprehensive framework in several interdisciplinary, industrial and cognitive science applications.