serial faces

According to N Katherine Hayles, author of How we Became Posthuman, “at the inaugural moment of the computer age, the erasure of embodiment [was] performed” so that ‘intelligence’ became the “property of the formal manipulation of symbols,” and consciousness became analogous to information processing.

When we equate data as humanness, intelligence as machine-like, we efface embodiment. George Lakoff, author of Philosophy In The Flesh, writes that love, anger and all the emotions we feel in our daily life cannot be separated from intelligence or consciousness – they are a necessary part. Unlike computing, communication is not neutral; speaking and comprehending are much more than simple data transfer. He says, “The mind is inherently embodied.”

In serial faces, I use a computer to limit data, to break down each iconic facial image into a limited gamut of colors. I then use this simplified pattern as a guide with other physical materials, to re-colorize and re-texturize the original image, for a much more complex, or enfleshed, form of communication.