ART, TECH HELPS BRING FACES OF THE DEAD TO LIFE

FACIAL reconstruction is best known as a forensic tool that can help identify human remains and reconnect them with families for burial or memorialisation. The technique has a potent claim on our imaginations.

These images are usually produced when other identification methods have failed. It’s usually a last resort with very high stakes.

What has become known as the Sutherland Reburial Project offers a unique opportunity to reflect on the objectives of recreating faces from skulls.

The project involved creating facial depictions based on human remains unethically acquired by the University of Cape Town in the 1920s.

The project has become a platform to ventilate the unfinished business of human remains discovered from South Africa’s unpleasant past. It has also set a precedent for repatriation and restitution initiatives.

The project has also demonstrated how science, art and technology converge in contemporary facial reconstruction and depiction.

At the start of May 2019, the project was undertaken by Face Lab, recognised as an international leader in cranio-facial research and analysis, with an entirely digital workflow.

Current methods have shown that shape can be accurately recreated with less than 2mm of error for approximately 70% of the facial surface.

The surface details of a face, known here as “texture”, are a matter of interpretation. Eye and hair colour, skin tone, wrinkles, scars and other marks, and some aspects of the ear cannot be reliably predicted from the skull alone. Genetic phenotyping is making some advances here, but not without significant controversy.

Yet these details are essential for creating a plausible face, so we must make a reasonable attempt, restricted by what can be justified by the available data.

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This procedure nondestructively mimics a manual sculpting process

Face Lab worked with 3D digital models of the Sutherland skulls produced from CT scans, which provided excellent surface detail along with internal information that refined feature prediction and allowed estimation of missing jawbones. This was necessary for three individuals in this group.

Where bony fragments were missing or damaged, reassembly was a necessary first step. The more bone absent, the more qualified the final result.

Face Lab employs a 3D modelling programme with a haptic (touch-sensitive) interface. This procedure non-destructively mimics a manual sculpting process, enabling optimal preservation of fragile or damaged bone by building up the soft tissues of the face in virtual clay.

Extensive visual research guided our final presentation choices for the Sutherland faces. This was supported by information from within the team, including ancient DNA, which confirmed biological sex in some cases, as well as kinship and geographical origins.

Clothing was suggested based on contemporaneous archival photographs taken in the same broad geographical area.

The results are historical interpretations produced with forensic fidelity.

The biographies this process was able to reconstruct, embodied in these eight faces, are highly specific. But they stand for the experiences of many others over many decades who have been lost to history, but from whom we have a great deal left to learn.

Smith is a visual and forensic artist and PhD researcher, and Wilkinson a professor at the School of Art and Design at Liverpool John Moores University. This article was first published in The Conversation