Catalyst Conversations: Faces, Genes, Patterns, Stories
7:00 PM - 8:00 PM Monday, April 27, 2015
Location:
MIT, Bartos Theatre
List Visual Arts Center
20 Ames St E15, Cambridge, MA 02139
Alberta Chu and Murray O. Robinson | Faces, Genes, Patterns, Stories
Catalyst Conversations is pleased to present filmmaker Alberta Chu and research scientist Murray Robinson as they discuss the ideas that led to their current collaboration: FaceTopo. This project stems from their interest in the genetics of faces and a big question - "A clear but genetically complex trait, could one's face possibly represent a visible proxy for one's genome? Is it possible to eschew the DNA part and just map faces?"
They have set out to build a taxonomy of human adult faces by conceiving a global citizen project to crowd-source 3D face data from users via a mobile App. Chu and Robinson challenge the notion of ideal beauty. For them, data is beautiful: the more diverse facial data that they can obtain from different people(s) globally, the more accurate their study will be. By collecting thousands of faces as varied as possible and analyzing the data, they aim to discover relationships that are significant to all faces.
RSVP here