Faces of Beauty?

By Anita in Art on Feb 13, 2007 at 1:49 pm

Some would say that many of the women in the above photo are quite beautiful, but in fact, none of them exist. Pierre Tourigny downloaded about 30 pictures of women per photo from a popular internet “photo rating” site, then used free software (SqirlzMorph) to create the virtual women in the composite images above. link [flickr]

Other projects that have attempted to create virtual belles and beaus via morphing technology include Face of Tomorrow and Beauty Check. The Virtual Miss Germany contestant on Beauty Check is particularly fascinating.

Neat stuff from the NeatoShop:

ToddZ
Feb 13th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Interesting, but I’m not sure if this illustrates anything profound or not. If you morph 30 photos into each other, you’ll always get a fairly symmetrical average of them, and it’s known that we’re wired to find symmetry attractive. You’ll also tend to end up with average brown hair and eye color. So it’s not really surprising that so many of these composites look similar, and that the main factor in lower rankings appears to be weight.

But miss “6.0-6.4″ is the cutest…
Jess
Feb 13th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
That’s right. Humans as a rule find average faces attractive (that is, many different faces morphed into one face to create an average of where the nose/eyes etc should be). This probably explains why the ratings seem a bit low for some very attractive girls.

And like ToddZ said, the symmetry also makes the faces more attractive. Symmetry is an indication of health and proper development, so from an evolutionary perspective it makes sense that we should be attracted to symmetry so that we can produce healthier offspring!

I also agree that miss â€œ6.0-6.4â€³ is super cute. Miss â€œ9.5-10â€³ is stunning though.
Jimbo
Feb 13th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
I’d hit it
Anita
Feb 13th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
I agree it may not be profound, I just thought it was neat (hence why I post at Neatorama and not Profoundorama ).

I often find that some level of asymmetry, along with look young, leads to a person being labeled as “cute” rather than “beautiful”. Ashlee Simpson is a great example. I thought she was as cute as a button before she got her nose job, but now she just looks plain.
Chad
Feb 14th, 2007 at 12:29 am
the only thing I found profound about this is that after digitally averaging all these women they all look hispanic now. weird
XuYu
Feb 14th, 2007 at 1:22 am
DON’T marry your cousin. Rudy Giuliani married his SECOND cousin and now look what’s happened to him!

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