The Performative Face: Digital Masks and the Disembedding of the Aesthetics of Identity

Performativity has emerged as a term with special significance in relation to two areas that hitherto have remained relatively discrete, - discourses of identity and gender (c.f. Judith Butler´s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 1990) and, by contrast, the possibilities of creative participation in the generation of real time effects in relation to screen images (c.f. Chris Salter´s extended coverage of this field in Entangled: Real time Sound, Performativity and Embodied Machines, 2009). This paper reflects on a project which brings the two together by focusing on what might be described as the primeval drive for facial embellishment. Using facial recognition technology and an interactive Wacom tablet, participants are empowered to move between several templates based on traditional cultural practices of Europe, Japan and Oceania, - or they may choose to use this inspiration to articulate their own facial iconography for the contemporary world.