creators_name: Schmidhuber, Juergen
type: techreport
datestamp: 1998-06-18
lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:54:12
metadata_visibility: show
title: Facial beauty and fractal geometry
ispublished: pub
subjects: behav-anal
subjects: behav-neuro-sci
subjects: bio-ani-cog
subjects: bio-socio
subjects: cog-psy
subjects: comp-neuro-sci
subjects: comp-psy
subjects: comp-sci-art-intel
subjects: comp-sci-complex-theory
subjects: comp-sci-mach-vis
subjects: comp-sci-neural-nets
subjects: comp-sci-stat-model
subjects: percep-cog-psy
subjects: phil-mind
subjects: phil-sci
full_text_status: public
keywords: beauty, attractiveness, fractal geometry, low-complexity art, low-complexity coding, vision, low-complexity face, aesthetics, information theory, Kolmogorov complexity, algorithmic complexity
abstract: What is it that makes a face beautiful? Average faces obtained by photographic (Galton 1878) or digital (Langlois & Roggman 1990) blending are judged attractive but not optimally attractive (Alley & Cunningham 1991) --- digital exaggerations of deviations from average face blends can lead to higher attractiveness ratings (Perrett, May, & Yoshikawa 1994). My novel approach to face design does not involve blending at all. Instead, the image of a female face with high ratings is composed from a fractal geometry based on rotated squares and powers of two. The corresponding geometric rules are more specific than those previously used by artists such as Leonardo and Duerer. They yield a short algorithmic description of all facial characteristics, many of which are compactly encodable with the help of simple feature detectors similar to those found in mammalian brains. This suggests that a face's beauty correlates with simplicity relative to the subjective observer's way of encoding it.
date: 1998-06
date_type: published
institution: IDSIA
department: Machine Learning Institute
refereed: FALSE
citation:   Schmidhuber, Juergen  (1998) Facial beauty and fractal geometry.  [Departmental Technical Report]     
document_url: http://cogprints.org/690/1/newlocoface.html