Having spent much of the past couple of years on the move, there are many close friends who I have not managed to spend enough time with. I began to wonder whether they could even remember what I looked like, or in fact what their mental image of me actually was.

I found a website (flashface.ctapt.de) where it is possible to assemble faces from the constituent features, somewhat like a police identikit portrait. I sent around emails with the link and asked my close friends if they could try and reconstruct my face using the software. I felt that this form of depicting my face was not based on a technical skill, such as drawing for example, and thus would be more accesible for a broader range of friends to try and accurately depict their mental image of me.

The results did vary quite considerably, but I do not think the software entirely eliminated the skill factor in representation. In general, people who were more familiar with imaging software, tended to make more ‘accurate’ portraits (or perhaps this is my distorted perspective). Nevertheless, some of the portraits which were less realistic did seem to capture some kind of likeness… The project is ongoing.