Algorithmic Frottage
Median
Humans
A mark, photographed and fed to the model, comes back promising more on the screen and delivering less in the print.
A hundred faces went in and ninety-two came back, each returned a little nearer to the average of every face the model had ever seen. The other eight it never handed back at all.
512 × 51292 pairs18 shown8 unreturned
rub the seam below to see what it changed ↓
I · the correction
Rub your eye against the model.
Left of the seam is the median the model returned, and to the right the input it was given. Drag across the plate, or focus it and use the arrow keys. Then press show the correction to light up, in red, the exact skin the machine rewrote, and read live how much of the face it decided to change.
the curated set · choose a plate
II · what you are looking at
The red map is a measurement made live in your browser.
Each plate is a single img2img pass. I rub a rough, idiosyncratic image (a mark I photographed) against a statistical model, which hands back a smoother, more normative one. That drift, from the face as given to the face as corrected, is what these plates record.
The correction is quiet and structural, not a change of surface style. The model doesn't restyle the face so much as regress it to the mean: it sands off blemishes, closes pores, resolves crowded teeth, imposes symmetry and, in at least one pair, reassigns a body's sex. Idiosyncrasy, wear, illness and ambiguity are quietly returned to the median human.
The red map is the raw per-pixel delta between input and output, thresholded, tinted and computed here in your browser. The number under each plate is the share of pixels that cleared that threshold, or how much of the face the model chose to rewrite. No two faces are corrected the same amount.
“The process is physical and gestural and it often feels like the material is guiding me; it is automatic. I sometimes get a sense that I’m working with the material to discover what should already be there.”
III · the catalogue
The model keeps returning every face to the same median.
Every pair in the set is here, input beside median. The verified corrections are marked, and the rest let the measured delta speak for itself.
input median The reassignment
In the source the kicked figure reads male: flat-chested, in a yellow vest. The model hands it back a woman: the jaw softened, the hair lengthened, the whole body re-read. The one frame it would not let stay ambiguous.
input 
median The tired face
A young man in a white tee, a dark mark under one eye, the skin flushed and worn, a second face behind him in shadow. The output clears the mark and evens the skin. The tired face handed back rested.
input 
median The passenger seat
Slumped in a car seat in a white tee, one cheek reddened and blemished. The model wipes the cheek clean and re-draws the jawline a hair straighter.
input 
median The football shirt
A blue football shirt in a green hallway, the mouth distorted and bloodied, the teeth bared. The model pulls the mouth partly shut and evens the face, the correction real but left unfinished.
input 
median The bus window
Long hair against a bus window, a dark coat over white, acne and high colour along the jaw. The output smooths the skin toward a more conventional handsomeness.
input 
median The flush
A close frontal face: high flush, red-rimmed eyes, spots scattered across the cheeks, bleached tips in the hair. What the model made of it, the difference map keeps.
input 
median The white fleece
A white half-zip fleece against a plain wall, the cheeks high with colour, the jaw set a little off-square.
input 
median Against the pillow
A green sweater, the head laid against a pillow, the face fever-flushed and the mouth chapped and reddened.
input 
median The white vest
A white vest under hard overhead light on the train, one cheek marked, the chin raised.
input 
median Straight to camera
A black sweater, straight to camera, the skin blotched and grazed under a flat grey light.
input 
median The window
Hard window light cut across the face, one eye held in shadow, a black turtleneck.
input 
median The cord
Long hair, a white sweater, a thin cord fallen across the chest, the face blank and lightly spotted.
input 
median The raised chin
Chin lifted, eyes up, a black jacket over a white tee in a plain grey corner.
input 
median Under the hat
A face shadowed under a hat against a hard blue sky, marks scored down one cheek.
input 
median The neon strip
Half-lit in a doorway beside a strip of magenta neon, a dark coat, the features barely read.
input 
median The park at dusk
A white zip jacket in a park at dusk, streetlamps coming on behind, the eyes tired.
input 
median The wet street
A leather jacket on a wet street at night, the cheek freckled with marks, the light thrown up off the road.
input 
median Too far to correct
A lone silhouette in the fog, tram-lines running out ahead. No face to median: here the model mostly leaves the light alone.
IV · the unreturned
Eight of the faces the model simply declined to answer.
Of a hundred faces fed to the model, ninety-two came back corrected and eight produced nothing at all. The plates below are left blank, one for each face the pipeline never handed back.
“I photograph the work and feed it through a generative pipeline, which misreads the marks and renders figuration that promises more on the screen but when printed, is always less.”
“I call it algorithmic frottage: my mind rubbing against a statistical model.”
- complete pairs
- 92
- shown here
- 18
- grid per frame
- 512²
- never returned
- 8
Median Humans · algorithmic frottage · DR McCulloch
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