Week #8 Faceless People and Maskless Faces

Here is a little playlist for you to feast on Click

mask, 
a form of disguise or concealment usually worn over or in front of the face to hide the identity of a person and by its own features to establish another being. This essential characteristic of hiding and revealing personalities or moods is common to all masks. As cultural objects they have been used throughout the world in all periods since the Stone Age and have been as varied in appearance as in their use and symbolism. - encyclopedia britannica

A mask is something that is present in our lives every single day, but it is one of those things that when asked to define you simply can't because it is to familiar, for example it is almos impossible to describe the word "the" or a color and this is simply because we are so used to it.

 I think it was on wednesday's class that we tried to define what a mask was and at the beginning we all the same basic idea of what a mask was, "something used to cover your face, used to hide and/or change your identity", so you might think that it is not that hard to describe because the description is very simple and even though that description may be correct and probably is the one that can be found in a dictionary it is too shallow, a mask is more than that. After merging together some more ideas we developed the definition a little bit more, it changed to "an object that covers any part of your face, to change and/or disguise the appearance of the person using it" something around those margins, but that one is also too shallow, mainly because I think that it cant be something that covers any part of your face; first we have to define what we mean by face, if we count the ears as part of the face would that mean that headphones or even earphones could be considered masks? and what about a mustache? a mustache can be grown naturally, does that mean that every person that has a mustache has a mask on? and the same goes for the eye brows and the nose, what about a clown nose is a clown nose a mask? questions like these are the ones that make the definition of mask be something complicated to come up with.   After a bunch of brain storming and after continuously modifying the definition I noticed that there was a reoccurring segment in every single definition, "To change and/or disguise" this cant be correct either because for example, if i make a mask of my own face and put it on does that mean that the mask of my face is not a mask when i wear it but is a mask when someone else wears it? I am not changing my face it is the same face under the mask, yet it is still a mask, and that takes us back to our first simpel definition, a mask has to be something that cover your face, but when we were really mixed up we finally hit the bullseye, a mask is "something that FIXES an emotion or expression on your face", that is the definition I like to stick to because it takes a little bit from every definition we had up to there, it is something that covers your face but it does not need to change the way you look it just needs to give you a fixed expression, a mask cant change so you need to express yourself with your body. 

But there is one thing that I am still not sure about, if a mask can move mechanically or by any other means giving the mask different face expressions and moods, does that mean it is not a mask anymore? and if that mask has my face on it and it is considered a mask, does that mean that my face is a mask?