 
|
GENIUS
COULD COME
from
a WELL MANAGED CURSE
The human brain may hold the secrets to
the
best image-compression algorithms:
"Vision
and the Coding of Natural Images",
(American Scientist, Vol. 88, page 238, may-June 2000):
by Bruno A. Olshausen, and David J. Field.
|
I read with great interest the above paper, being a
"prosopamnesian"
and refusing to be cured after three years of hard "graphotherapy".
I could at least bring a very different opinion at this time of
researches
on "Reconnaissance
of Faces by Computer",
as I changed, from "remembering no face at all" to "keeping a
trace" in a field that is the absolute challenge of the painters:
the
human face.
I
quite
agree, it was necessary for our brain "to invent tricks to
solve
the "enormous amount of
similarity"
existing in nature...
The authors have thought of this facial problem,
|
"... and bring some suggestion to advance the day, scientists may be
able
to build machines that rival people's ability to search through
complex
scenes and quickly recognise objects— from obscure plant species
to never-before-seen views of someone's face. Such
feat s would be truly remarkable. But more remarkable still is
that
the principles used to design these futuristic devices may mimic
those of the human brain." (page 245
Future
Directions). |
But, most probably and as usual, Nature, (that makes all new things
with
old ones...), reused old recipes for faces...
I could at least add
______
- some live and lived definitions:
"A "Normal Type" arriving at a meeting, looks around: "Qui
JE_connais?",
(WhomIKnow?). A "Prosopian" begs smiles: "Qui
ME_connaît?",
(WhoMeKnow?) (French is better!)
______
- and some important distinctions
between "problem-inside" and "problem-outside" observers:
the perfect reference book for the second case is surley, "In
the Eye of the Beholder", (Bruce and Young), but I'm
surprised
since this book was strangely written for
the Scottish Exhibition of Portraits!
When
I started a plan to stop my "curse", (three
years
ago), I remembered my rule as a statistician: "Avoid
the guy who knows!"
But it's a common practise in the world of Arts: "Visiting the
exhibition, I was careful to avoid buying the guidebook ... My
intention
was that my eyes should be attracted by genuine merit alone; and that
they
should not be attracted by ill-deserved reputations, which are the
results
of bygone days for which I have little respect..." (Stendhal, 31
Aug.
1824)
1. Who could help?
So I listed people spending their lives studying
faces but not knowing a bit
about "prosopamnesia":
______
-
portraitists
______-
and morphopsychologists,
("prosopomorphists" would be
more correct).
1.1 portrait-drawing
In three years, I "penetrated":
______-
a course for high-class amateurs taught by a real artist; (during the
first
month, I asked so silly questions that my teacher sent me to the
wall to draw this awful fellow!)
______-
a group of professionals uniting to pay a model;
______-
the courses offered by the Louvres Museum. |
 |
1.2 Morphopsychology,
(invented by Dr. Corman), really teaches how to read a face, (but
I don't agree on its possibility to select employees...) This
neuropsychiatrist
spent his life analysing, (and publishing books on), faces. But he did
not see the advantage of dominating drawing! However a painter named Leonardo
opened the door to modern surgery by using drawing as a formation. Dr.
Corman's Society, with branches all over the world, has published a lot
of studies, for 70 years; but Bruce and Young only
mentionned
an ancestor of "prosopomorphy", Lavater.
1.3 note on a deception
Internet was a great change, offering the possibility to find similar
people.
How many do exist? Some specialists think everybody could be a
"PA
carrier", (as well as an "autism-carrier"). But I find strange that
people
discovering they are not alone, and not mad, that they could not solve
their problem "trying harder", start crying but are not
interesting
to put an end to their "deficit", or even to show it's a great
advantage
on "Normal Types"...
Company, replicas and exchanges are indispensable to prove and to
progress.
"If
Robinson
on his island discovers all the science of the Third Millennium, it
won't
be science..." (Popper
of course).
A lost opportunity? Because searching should be a continual despair if
we were not convinced that, probably, we won't solve the problem but,
being
on the look-out we'll find much more than expected! Some say that
"prosopamnesians"
can't make friends. I rarely did only through solving big problems.
| Motivation
was greatly
needed. And nobody could be as motivated as I am, "condemned
and
totally destroyed by two espaÑazi tribunals, on an imprudent
letter
of my mother, stating that:
"when he was
young, he did
not care for others..."
A decent
certificate, among many others, of a probable case of autism and
prosopamnesia.
No
Dr. Kanner or Dr. Asperger in my infancy! Happily? |
Today, "problem outside specialists" continue talking of "PA" like
other
"specialists" spoke of Africa before René Caillé.
1.4 A reference book
on faces
I
repeat: "In the Eye of the
Beholder",
(Bruce and Young), is surely a reference book on faces, but
______
- I disagree on deciding that portraiting would bring nothing to the
problem.
("Trop vert et bon pour les
goujats"?)Therefore,
I would recommend Gary Faigin's
"The
Artist Complete Guide to Facial Expression",
1990, Watson-Guptill Publications. (translated
in various languages).
Channel 5
|
-
Portrait
is the challenge in painting!
-
Many "modern" painters admit they can't do a portrait and I don't know
any great painter that is not a first class portraitist.
-
Portraiting is "active":
you inverse from a
passive
contemplation:
"Are they
alike?"
to an active and difficult
analysis:
"What should
be done
to have them alike"?
|
 |
To all, I
dedicate
a page of the
Journal
de Stendhal:
12 September 1824
Imagine that we throw
into
prison an ordinary man, totally unfamiliar with any idea of
art or literature, like one of those ignorant people to be found
in any great capital, and imagine he is told that he will only be set
free
when he is capable of exhibiting a nude at the Salon, perfectly drawn.
This prisoner would in fact be granted his liberty after
only two or three years....
If we were to
telI
him that he would be set free when he had developed the ability to
portray
in a manner recognizable to the public the despaír of a lover
who
has just lost bis mistress, or the joy of a father who sees again the
son
he believed dead, the poor unfortunate would find himself condemned
to prison in perpetuity. This
is
because, unfortunately for many artists, the passions are not an exact
science, which any artist can master in due course... |
2. "Creativity begins with
a shock" (Dr. de Bono)
Faces are probably treated by the right
lobe, which manages unconscious
activities,
therefore has its own way to be programmed. This
point seems capital before any description of any "theory of mind", of
any program of education and re-education.
If drawing is handled by the right lobe, emotional shocks at the
right
place could be the "ptogrammation", for instance a bitter
remark...
Now most artists are "oranges", delighted to help, but some are true
"lemons".
And a cold silence in front of a patent mistake is killing. I was
extremely lucky: I had shocks!
My first teacher was a native artist with two courses of philosophy,
(and
named Sophie). Recently she told me: "It
was not obvious..." She had to crush
my
ideas:
"I want to copy a curve a-b in A-B. Do
I put my pencil on A an follow line a-b with my eyes; or do I learn a-b
and carry it on A-B?"
Sometimes she went to her seat, furious: "I draw through intuition!".
Strangely, one day, I could not draw a long straight line and advised:
"Put your pencil on A, look at B, the
point
of arrival; and go!" What I needed.
But first, I got what I urgently needed: she put me in front of an
awful
apostle, (by Georges de la Tour), and "Have
a go!". I had two choices: run away or
try, both with ridicule. I sweated FOUR hours and for the first time, I
remembered a "trace" of a face, (I regularly meet my "saint torturer"
in
Louvres).
This point is to be considered when thinking of a device recognising
faces.
3. Fighting the Fright of
the White Paper!
I therefore discovered the pastelists, and became a
perfectionist,
(spending on each portrait hours and days!),
<http://www.prosopautism.com/FMONTA.htm>
Not the solution for my problem. So I turned to "fast
portraying",
recording newsreels and in the time of the "PAUSE" command! (less
than 5 minutes) drawing known people, (to judge the work when
the
model has disappeared). At most, I added some colours with my finger:
Portraitists
feel the "fright
of the white paper"
but prosopamnesians have a special problem: setting the spare
parts
of the "little face", (eyes, nose, mouth) at their correct place!
 |
Left:
This could be a drawing of mine! I can draw each part correctly but
even
when staring at length's arm, I don't see such enormous
mistakes
before the next day! Was Greuze a "prosopamnesian"? I copied his girl
at
my "favorite museum", Cognacq-Jay in Paris. A lot of such
"eye-greuzing"
in museums, (right).
|
 |
After collecting and trying all techniques invented to attack the white
paper, (see note), I invented a frame based on the
fact
that only two points do not move in a face: the line in the middle of
eyes,
(sockets), and the line in the middle of teeth. Then, I noted that many
faces can be reduced to a rectangle 2 by 3 squares.
This is near ly the famous "GOLD NUMBER" found in cathedrals,
Parthenon...
(the mathematical ratio is 1.61). In fact, painters don't care about
this
Golden Rule and the only good example is the commercial sheet 21 by 29
cms.
But it's easy to produce a face, always "decent", with the
"expression", the famous "mood", in 50 seconds. No portraitist looks
for
ressemblance, (like the divine grace, it's a gift you can't demand!)
but
all agree on the advice of Ingres: "the portrait must be showable
at any moment". You should catch the "expression", (a gentle
caricature),
immediately, in three lines and twenty seconds.
I started a collection of famous non-professional painters, (Goethe,
Ruskin,
Sand Hugo... Many are great scientists: Charcot , Cajal,... Pasteur is
surely the best one. Why his pastels, (at age 17!), give us a feeling
of
"something wrong", (the "golden frame" could help!)
Easy to prove it with my frame. Apparently, he jumped to painting
before
dominating drawing. And clever colouring doesn't improve bad drawing!
Drawing disappeared from schools with Jules Ferry, (teaching drawing to
teachers was as complicated as nowadays computing?)
However, reading permits writing; drawing prepares to seeing.
3.1 The mystery of
caricature:
The
portrait of Sempaio, the Portuguese President, was done before his
caricature,
After,
after the portrait appeared "poor".
ContraInformaçao
|
|
Drawing a
portrait on the
caricature gives a false
portrait
but
more convincing
that the real one!
|
|
Caricature is a great help in itself: Chirak, always changing, in faces
and ideas, is therefore difficult to catch. I could do it only after
copying
some exagerated caricatures of "Les Guignols de l'Info", ( "Infos by
Punch").
Why these exaggerated caricatures of Chirak could be accepted? Chirak
has
a high forehead, some wrinkles on it, thin enough lips preparing to
say:
"Did I sink my boat once more time?"
(I'm not alone in this school of thought!)
But why a person is more
easily
recognised by his/her caricature than his/her photo or an oil
portrait.
In fact, I always recognised a "famous" after seeing his/her
caricature,
(obviously a "face-reduction"...), and most portraitists,
following
Ingres, advise:
"Add some hidden
caricature to your drawing..
 |
When
any
new Politician appears, there is, on the "media", during the first
week,
an exchange of proposals for a caricature, till a "standard" is
accepted.
If true, what we keep of a face in our mind is a "caricature"? and
caricaturists
create a common language for all?
Left:
a proof that, (after many exchanges!), "compression" of a face can be
very
important and should be studied inside "imaging", revealing an
object
progressively . |
A drawing
"evokes",
a painting must be exact? So, the ideal for a portraitist would be to
know
the caricature hidden in the head of his model's family and
friends!
 |
Who
certifies this is the first "mobile auto-portrait"? Calder! Some
people are "morning" but I am surely "afternoon".
I realized these "movies", while wondering how "Normal Types" saw
me.
<<<<
Painting
seems superior to >>>>
|
 |
4. The mystery of "imaging"
This kind of guessing is a success with children:
Draw
an object
in
3 lines
|
|
Banjo?
Cherry?
Finish
full speed!
|
|
Pure imaging
needs no
imagination,
just the attention
of the hunter
|
|
Among
my "advantages" is an initiation in a totally lost African tribe, where
I could imagine the invention of dance, trance, comedy, courtesy,
music,
epic poetry,... There is a great difference: "pure imaging" is
just
the state of the hunter trying to recognise a prey in the bush. While
guessing
uses conscience for more. This distinction will be capital when we
study
a 'theory of conscience".
But we said "hunter"?
4.1 Still hunting
Ginzberg
in ("Mythes, emblèmes, traces",
Flammarion, 1989),
described men like "hunters"
able
to guess a world from a minimum sign: "Who smells dung smells
a roasted rabbit or a cured ham..." Like the fox guessing a hen
from
a feather or the medic deducing small pox... we recognise Gorby from
his
"strawberry" and Pinnochio d'Artagnan, from his nose... The first
person
I remembered had a small difference on the nose.
Comparing similar structures is a recipe in creativity; for example,
comparing
autisms with dyslexia, or the
complex of Benjamin, both, (most probably), due to soft causes, to
linking
of synapses only. Then only we should study autisms with "hard
origins".
Reading is surely indicated for "prosopamnesia". We learn this
artificial
language very recently and laboriously. But it's one of the techniques
most described: we can "spell", "decipher". On the opposite, fast
reading
is "jumping over words". Which means that we are able to see a set of
letters
as a unique picture. But, as indicated by the scanner, we refer
to
"vocabularies", the seven English sounds for "ough", the ten
French
ways of writing the sound "o". Most probably, during the short delay of
Libet, we have used various means, including a lecture of colours, of
gestures,
of hands, all indications so utile to, (and so used), by painters...
Others
fruitful
parallels? witnesses at tribunals sending innocents to jail, young
girls
seeing saints in a grotto... I lived as a "prosopamnesian" during eight
years, knowing and hiding it. Plenty of time for instropection: when I
visited or expected somebody, I could not imagine more than his/her
bulk.
But as soon as I had a glance at him/her, I was sure to recognise
him/her next time. It is true that the observer influences his
observation.
Much more with faces: we guess, we make them...
If we admit that "Nature uses old
things
to invent new ones...", we should
accept
a similitude between recognizing faces and "ideas". Maybe the first
step
to determine if the computer will speak?
Today, after thousands of hours sweating and some humiliation, I keep a
"minimum trace" from persons I could make a fast portrait of,
(fact
which was previsible from the caricature analysis). I can even
remember
a face after strongly imagining his/her caricature. Not a long time and
not many people: but there is no reason, no motivation, no danger to
incite
me.
Time to quote again: "our brain had to
invent tricks to solve the "enormous amount of similarity"
existing in nature..."
Apparently,
Nature sticks to differences.
Should we link with the extraordinary capacity, recognised to
"aspergers",
to see a detail ? Should we linked with this reduction typical of man:
the "concept" that permit to manipulate ideas. Science itself advanced
by noting a dust (Fleming) or a glow, (Branly).
A
small change is a superiority for the "gifted". Selection started
immediately
among the tribes in war. Darwin
would have disappeared at the first encounter!
4.2 "to reduce" or "to deduce"?
I
propose a history of our ancestors, to guess which invented what.
Surely a cat is fast to distinguish a rat from a dog. It's "eat
or eaten!" My lost tribe had just one word for any
dead
animal, "meat", let it be hippopotamus or snake, (the last one I ate on
the day of my initiation!). A cat doesn't distinguish a rat from
another: all dogs are "bad". All rats are "meat". Do they
distinguish
"moods"?
Some monkeys surely,
as they make "faces" to frighten an ennemy.
At 20 meters, we don't recognise a person but we guess s/he is very
angry...
Therefore, recognising the mood, very important, appeared before
recognising
a person? If monkeys recognise "moods", how many? seven like the
Newtonian
colours? surprise, joy, anger, fright, disgust... Maybe, we don't
recognise
more but culture and novels have created a language, (because novelist
don't draw), and we put faces on them. Take Gary Faigin, "The
Artist
Complete Guide to Facial Expressions", page 14, or pages 270-283 and
change
labels. Or better have a go on pictures: a very small change at the
corner
of the lips and your model changes from smile to sneer...
But do monkeys
distinguish
"individual faces". They don't need this more than a "prosopamnesian".
I distinguish hair, slim or bulky bodies. Moreover, animals have
preserved
smell and hearing, more useful during the night. Mother has a specific
smell.
Any small progress can
be changed into an advantage. Therefore shapes or colours were probably
used to recognised other beings. A "prosopamnesian" distinguishes
"dolicocephales"
from "brachycephales" and Chinese from Indians but all people have
problems
inside a coloured group. Which does not prove that we all
"prosopamnesians".
5. Relations are important
There is another advantage in my "gold number" frame: relations are
capital
in a face! and we get 6 fixed points. Now, (that was my first
invention
to get over my 'PA-problem'), take a portrait (I), mark some 8 or 10
points,
(II), then with a Photo-Shop kick the portrait away(III). The drawing
will
come without any error (IV et V).
How could
we explain this "facility"? all mood-muscles have two kinds of points
of
fixation, some fixed on the skull, the others on the flesh of the face.
And I remember a good portraitist explaining his teacher obliged
him to draw lots of skulls. Awful! Maybe, he acquired an extraordinary
sense of what moves and what can't move?
Burns-Jones
had such an opinion of feminine beauty that he painted few of them. Is
this painting of his Greek lover a good portrait? not far.
Does the Burns-Jones' model know that their relation has terminated?
Her
eyes seem to see, her mouth accepts?
The result is what makes a good portrait, something rare.
MONA LISA explained?
A "mood" is difficult to obtain: you
must harmonize "two" moods, coming independantly from eyes and mouth.
In Carnavalet, you find this harmony in the portraits of Hamelin,
Arago,
Michelet. Lehmann, a relatively unknown disciple of Ingres, is perfect
in Liszt and Agoult.
For me, the
winner is Mona Lisa. For a long time I thought the
mystery
was the result of a a "push-pull" between two mysteries, painter
and painting. If the portrait is the challenge of painters, Mona's
smile
is the challenge of portraitists and deserves a special treat.
Anyway Vinci's and
Burns-Jones'
girls, with their long asthmatic noses, are a great help to introduce
my
next chapter...
6. Noses also are important
Noses are quite impossible to draw with a line, (except for
Toulouse-Lautrec).
They need 3D to be convincing.
for recognising, placed in the middle of the face like a rudder ,
each nose being different from the other but practically not changing
in
form. A very interesting inquiry and, maybe, I revolutionalised
some
stupid ideas on noses?
<http://www.prosopautism.com/FFACES.htm>
or <http://www.prosopautism.com/FCARNA.htm>
6.1 other spare parts
Eyes
and mouth have been studied lots of time. Usually, ears are
not mentionned as a means to recognise people: they don't belong
to
the "small face". Teachers advise to draw them carefully to
avoid a childish drawing. But some ears seem "caricatures"
easy to remember. Maybe we carry a "standard ear" like the famous
"Egyptian"
eye, and care only for differences?
7. Is face an object?
In painting, a face is submitted to the laws of objects, even producing
illusions.
Well-known illusion |
Like any
landscape, portraiting
starts by reducing a 3D face to a 2D drawing. Then you try to
give
back a 3D aspect, using "values". But, due to "aerial
perspective",
the 2D provisionnal drawing and the 3D final painting don't occupy the
same surface!
|
|
Admitting the general rule, "Nature uses old things to make new ones",
it is most probable that brain, to keep "traces" of faces, used its
recipes
for "recognising objects".
Muriel Boucart, in "La Reconnaissance des Objets", )PUG 1996), states:
"La recherche en sciences cognitives dans ce domaine sont
très
récentes... Visualiser les régions du cerveau
activées
par une information ne nous explique pas comment l'information y est
traitée...
on ne pourra comprendre que par une approche pluridisciplinaire..."
(la bibliographie rassemble quelques 250 articles).
I doubt any pluridisciplinarian approach: a synthesis, a new idea
appears
in one and only one brain. I have demonstrated it while searching
the most desirable M.I.S. in Management. Moreover, this object-problem
could crash on Wittgenstein's challenge:
"Knowing all about
brain,
you won't know anything about mind..."
7.1 "Why
are upside-down faces so hard to recognize?",
ask Bruce and Young. "More
strange!",
a portraitist will add,
"these inverted
faces
are easier to draw!"
Betty Edwards, among others, uses this recipe to teach: "Dessiner
grâce au cerveau droit",
(Mardaga éditeur). She explains this mystery with the last
fashion, the theory of "bicameralism", but the easiness seems to come
from
a "destruction of standards", similar to the "Egyptian
eye".
We don't see because we "know".
|
Why,
in an inverted
face,
the
"horror"
of inverted
eyes
or mouth
disappears?
|
|
Turn
it
round slowly: the "horror" appears
or disappears
at a definite
angle.
|
|
The surprising inverted faces of Mrs Thatcher, or J. F. Kennedy, could
be the way, (JFK is better: you can revert it any and many times:
you don't recognise him anymore). The mystery is "why the disappearance
of the horror?"
Everybody solves problems, (and creates his convictions), using his
experiences.
I was born one-eye blind. Total detachment of retina. But I never saw
black,
just reddish orange. Ten years ago, looking in a stereo projector, I
saw
the picture in 3D! In fact, I see a nosegay perfectly. But I
can't
read: my brain re-paints black holes, not letters!
Therefore, the "Three Brains Theory" could be an "outsider's vision", a
facility to explain a complex tinkering; that most faculties have come
separately during the evolution, and have to be re-cabled by every
child.
Any mistake can happen.
My blind eye kept the gift of a worm wanting to find the
direction
of the sun to warm its belly. That's why I don't believe in "innate
ideas",
just in "inheritage from ancestors".
|
Effectively,
we have more cases. Painters use to light their portraits from top-left
. Light comes from the north-north-east? a "natural dogma"? Quite
obvious with a ball changing from convexe to concave when turn 180
degrees.
And we have the strange case of "synesthesia"
described by Luria in the thirties, and re-discovered recently. |
 |
In another paper, I explain my theory
to update our knowledge. Discoveries
like
"synesthesia", (seen as a progressive construction of our brain, by
continual
addings).
Therefore, a "theory-to-break": with time, animals understood the great
difference: a standing face could be dangerous, a matter of life or
death;
and should be "read": "Foe? Friend?"
On the ground, it's "Food! dinner is ready!".
Now calling this "an innate idea" is no progress in thinking.
Another gift from our ancestors? they did not give us the "idea of
triangle".
But when we elaborate it, we could stock together triangle and standing
face and declare it a "Kantian category". It's most probable that
both are managed by the right lobe, but faces are loaded with
history
and feelings while triangles can turn aroud without changing.
I therefore find funny to state that a "prosopamnesian"
could be defined
"person seeing
faces
as objects",
(and believe me! consequences
are
bloody), person that did not acquire the last step in
socialisation;
probably by a new use of cabling and probably the last step in
the
march to humanisation. This could explain that total loss of memory
happen
through accidents.
8. Conclusion: a better use
of "prosopamnesia"
As it is probable
that
"prosopamnesia" is linked to autism, (and reciprocally, as confirms
recently
by the University of Yale), this chapter will be ended after a thorough
study of
"autism as a
possible
source of conscience and any knowledge".
including a different
"Theory of Mind"
that will be inside a
"Theory of
Conscience".
NOTE on TRICKS OF
PORTRAITISTS
TO FIGHT THE "FRIGHT OF WHITE
PAPER"!
I
had to create my own way to "fight
the fright of white paper", but I started a
collection:
among the various techniques I met, I admire: "coming
out of the mist", the great style; totally
impossible
for me. Another method is "painting
a drawing". You start with a perfect drawing, (like
Audrey
Beardsley), then you paint the same surface, (some drawings of
Toulouse-Lautrec
or Picasso are painted drawings).
I bought all the existing books: all of them had some "trick",
original,
interesting. The World of Art is a world. In fact, there is no
school
of painter and each one has to discover his own way in everything,
(elsewhere,
he would not exist but this will for difference has become a plague
nowadays).
|
Skulls,
|
|
|
Skulls!
|
Frames,
|
|
 |
Frames!
|
|
Sphère
|
|
|
Last, a trick of mine, the "pine-apple", that at
least got me some sympathy of "sweet-orange painters":
