I made this bit of computer art close to ten years ago, trying to recreate images from dreams. It seems rather face-like now, though that wasn't evident to me in the process of its creation.

The human face is the first thing we learn to distinguish visually as infants.

The summer of 1973, I took a child development course at USL - University of Southwestern Louisiana, now University of Louisiana - Lafayette. A large portion of the class was focused on human infancy and infant perception. When we are first born, we see an abstract melee of colors and shapes in motion. We can't yet discriminate one object from another, a person from a thing, a dog from a big brother. We don't even have the motor coordination yet to track and focus very well!

Gradually, with experience, our brain, hungry for puzzles, learns to recognize the separateness of things, and eventually to recognize their identities.

The professor - I think her name was Thomas - taught us about research on visual perception that had been done with infants. The researchers found that there are some visual schemes that capture even a newborn's attention for a second or two, in particular, patterns that resemble the human face.

As infants, we are rewarded when we are held and a face looms large above us. We see the face, we turn toward it and find ourselves warmed against our parent's chest. We hear the familiar sound of heartbeat. We find food that satisfies our thirst and hunger. This instinct and early learning permit us to live long enough to get some basic motor and sensory skills, long enough to learn to feed ourselves. We pay attention when a face emerges from the chaos, anticipating love.

The pattern or template of 'face' is imbedded within us from the start, and holds our fascinated attention throughout life.