LJMU Face Lab Fellow produces facial reconstructions for The Quest for Ancestral Faces project
Director Prof Caroline Wilkinson and Dr Maria Castaneyra-Ruiz, a visiting postdoctoral fellow from LJMU Face Lab, have collaborated in The Quest for Ancestral Faces, a project created and produced by visual artist Francesca Phillips, and exhibited at El Museo Canario in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria from 14th December 2018 - 31st March 2019.
Face Lab, directed by Professor Caroline Wilkinson, focuses on the digital creative agenda. Specifically, Face Lab explores faces and art-science applications. Dr Maria Castaneyra-Ruiz represents the first local anthropologist to produce facial depictions of the ancient population of The Canary Islands.
The exhibition presents over fifty facial reconstructions from indigenous remains, dating from the 6th century, and the face of a mummy housed in the museum’s skeletal collection room, together with over fifty portraits of the contemporary population and recorded conversations and interviews with Canarian archaeologists, anthropologists and geneticists made by Francesca Phillips.
Financially supported by The Canarian Government, Fundación Canaria Dr. Manuel Morales and LJMU, it is the most extensive exhibition of facial depictions from the same archaeological population ever, anywhere in the world, and the first time that a Canarian mummy has been presented in 4D, with animation. Several facial averages produced from the ancient population are also displayed.
The craniofacial computer system has previously been employed to analyse, authenticate and/or depict the faces of key historical figures, such as Richard III, Robert the Bruce and Mary Queen of Scots.
