Notes on facial expressions

Facial expressions have several uses and do several things. Often signaling, but not always. 

They exist in different groups: 

1. Broadcast or projecting (delivering the signal) 

2. listening (receiving the signal) 

3. event driven 

4. Narrative driven (theatrical or event mapping-with biases regarding prestige and status)

5. Buttressing or concealing emotional states 

6. Imitating likeness or “trying on” this can be done alone and in some cases might be practicing, “trying on”, or rehearsing being others and role playing.

What people usually think of with facial expression is narrative driven not event driven. They imagine the theatrical set and easily recognize it, while event driven can be unexpected, unnerving, and subtle.

6 is sometimes called “mirroring”. 

1. So the first group tend to point information in an angled cone or funnel with the nose as the pointer or arrow of attention

This set tends to be aggressive or dominant. 

Lips will point forward more and the face condenses in a smaller circumference of actions, projecting forward. So on an x,y,z axis it sacrifices x&y for z (depth) information. 

It indicates like all depth a focusing of importance. Or a trade in the value of agency going from self centered to the approaching agent (what am I do, what are you doing).

If form change = value change in drawing. Depth change = interest and importance change. We shift value in personal identity and interest. Melting into more or less social or individual identities.

2. Has the opposite effect and may indicate a different stage of evolution than 1. (Also 4 and 6 may fall into a later social stage.) The nuances of close living at transitional stages of group living and a need for silence or re-enforcement or re-enactment (tracing sequences of events or mapping events.) It is still common among highly aggressive and even criminal groupings of men, leaders communicate through their eyes and eye motions, without speaking. If speech is used things have escalated. Likewise, eye communication is also meant to contradict word meanings in these groups. These groups are usually male, enclosed, and tribal (and almost always part of cliques, elites or criminal groups). In Latin the term for this was “auctoritas” from which we get the word “authority”. Augustus claimed powers of auctoritas. Likewise in recent political scandals in the U.S., cronies have claimed the nefarious use of auctoritas, but other figures such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and several Mexican Cartel leaders and Brazilian favela Dons have been known to use auctoritas as eye language. The use of subtle aggression indicates group mores in opposition to the aggression.

The areaS of the face "0"...like a satellite dish and often head and neck pulled back. Facial features widen and stretch back in signal of reception (and actual data reception).

There are some theories that suggest sound/vision (kiki/bouba) origins of language. Facial features (with empathic coloring and circular to linear variations) fall into the kiki/bouba family and can be displayed in connection with sounds (watch the facial contortions of musicians playing low to high notes and the spectrum of aggressive to submissive emotional states they display).