First, I have to tell you about my friend, Sandra Byrd. She's a novelist and I did a teeny little favor for her. What'd she do in return? She sent me bubble gum balls! I'm so happy (and busy chewing my bubble gum).
On to the topic of the day--In my research on faces and beauty, I've run across some interesting things. First, click on the link below take a gander at the following morph--notice especially how the eyes seem to follow you and remain constant. See any familiar faces? The names of the actresses are listed below the video. (But after watching, come back here!)
http://www.flixxy.com/women-in-film.htm
Fascinating, huh?
Okay, now visit this site: http://www.beautyanalysis.com/index2_mba.htm Be sure to click on the sub link that says "PHI--the key to beauty"
Dr. Stephen Marquardt has done a study of beauty and found its formula--if you look around his web site, you'll see that the Greeks said that all beauty is mathematics. If that is true then perhaps there is a mathematical code, formula, relationship or even a number that can describe facial beauty.
Historically many different numbers have been tried in an attempt to describe beauty however, only one mathematical relationship has been consistently and repeatedly reported to be present in beautiful things.
The "Golden Ratio" is a mathematical ratio of 1.618:1, and the number 1.618 is called "Phi".
To make a long theory short, beautiful things correspond to that ratio--and by looking at the examples on his web site, you can see how we find beauty in things that fit the ratio. (Makes you marvel at God the master designer, doesn't it? Look how often the formula repeats in the human body, in sea shells, in plant life. Amazing!) Notice especially that gadget that looks like a three-toothed comb--it measures the ideal ratio for beauty, and just look how those ratios are present in the human face. I don't know why this fascinates me, but it does.
Dr. Marquardt has devised his "beauty mask" based on the formula--certain ratios have to be present in order for a face to be symmetrically and classically beautiful.
Now, look at the actresses' morphing film again, and notice how many of those faces would fit the mask. Hmmm . . . there is a definite standard there.
How does all this apply to my WIP? I have no idea.
~~Angie
7 comments:
Did anyone find that Utube a little creepy?
The "Golden Ratio" huh? My left-brain self loves the predictability and dependability of numbers. Very interesting . . .
This IS fascinating! I remember conducting an experiment when our oldest son was just 4 or 5. I named off a list of women he knew well, asking him to answer yes or no to "is she beautiful?" No matter how much he loved (or disliked!) the woman, his answers fit the world's measure of physical beauty every time! He even "apologized" for saying "no" to some (which made me feel like a rather cruel mother!) but nevertheless, even if it was someone dear to him, he did not consider her "beautiful" if she wasn't by the world's standards. It blew the theory I was hoping to prove by asking him the questions, BTW!
I remember watching a special on either Discovery or The Learning Channel about the "beauty ratio" last year. And that golden ratio is found everywhere in nature - number of petals in different layers of a flower, the spirals in a shell, etc. Learned that from an episode of Numb3rs. :)
Angie,
If you enjoyed Dr. Marquardt's research, you may find this site interesting as well:
http://www.faceresearch.org/
Fascinating stuff!
Kelli
I'd heard of the Golden Ratio before and find it fascinating, too.
Once I saw a bumper sticker that said "Intelligent Design is neither"
And boy, it just ticked me off. Because all you have to do is look around. I think that's why this is so amazing. It just screams out "God did this". You can't reasonably deny a designer.
That was just downright fascinating! You always have interesting links, Angie. But it makes me wonder how much time you spend looking for things like that. LOL
That was very interesting.
Loved the morph, but might have liked just a tad longer pause (even a few milliseconds more) at each face before moving on to the next. It's not hard to produce a morph just time consuming. All those dots, dots, dots ...
It was "Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land," a grade school teacher's favorite movie to order when they knew ahead of time they were taking off a day and there would be a substitute. The golden ratio was one of the highlights of that movie that we must have seen 28 times (and "Hemo The Magnificent" from Bell Labs came a close second with about 23 showings) through five or six years of grade school ...
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