While searching for inspiration for my next blog, I came across this website: http://www.faceoftomorrow.com/home.asp. The concept that the site is trying to promote is that the “face of the future” can be previewed by combining a few faces from people that are currently living in a certain city. This idea seemed really interesting and very pertinent to our class. The website’s question that it is trying to answer is, “What might a typical inhabitant of this new metropolis look like in one or two hundred years if they were to become more integrated?” (Mike Mike).
The originator, author, and photographer for the project is Mike Mike. He developed the idea of a “common face” throughout his travels. While he was in
Istanbul, he noticed the uniformity of looks that most people shared. “[Since Istanbul is] situated… at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, you can see how this process has been at work over the last thousand years as waves of humanity from Central Asia, Arabia, Greece and Rome have been absorbed. The resulting population is fairly uniform suggesting that if you could combine all the faces in a city right now you would be looking at the future face of that city” (Mike Mike). This led him to the conclusion that this was the future of other cities such as
London due to globalization.
In order to create a face, or really two faces (one male and one female), for each city, Mike Mike uses overlaying photographic techniques. Also, to make sure the faces are fairly accurate, he stops people at random on the streets.
Right now, Mike Mike has photographed one hundred faces in each of sixteen cities that have spanned over four continents. He is also in the process of creating faces for cities in North America such as Washington, D.C. and
Austin, Texas. Once Mike Mike finishes photographing and creating all the cities that are announced to be “coming soon” on the website, there will be two faces each for thirty cities across six continents.
My question for Mike Mike would be what about a world face? I would be curious if he thought that there could be a possibility that a there would be enough integration between people in all corners of the globe. I think that he should try to do an overlay of all thirty males and all thirty females once his project is complete for the ultimate sense of globalization. The only other question I have is how long would it take for everyone in the world to look the same? This is a very scary thought.
