receiving robo-facials
the fact that modern day photo programs like picasa and iphoto have the ability to recognise my face gives me the heebie-jeebies. i have tried to disguise myself by: growing a beautiful mustache, wearing XL hipster glasses, and shaving off my exquisite unibrow to no avail—picasa can still somehow distinguish between me and my many handsome associates. how far would i have to go to keep these systems from recognising me? furthermore, what is the threshold of abstraction for a face to still be understood as a face? enter scott mccloud and his graphical abstraction scale from understanding comics.
before i start presenting this groundbreaking chart at siggraph, i should note that the function of facial recognition in photo programs is to help catalogue your photo database, it is NOT for helping you organize your manga collection. thus neither iphoto’s literal view of the world or picasa’s high tolerance for icon is better than the other.
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many many thanks to my taekwondo sparring partner, mills baker for running this image through iphoto and reporting back the results in the scientific manner that this issue deserves.
