Interface: Transplants, Aesthetics and Technology (Previously About Face: The affective and cultural history of face transplants)

AboutFace（2019-2024）是对面部移植的情感和文化历史的首次重大调查。使用情感历史方法，它与世界各地的外科团队合作，并主要来自美国和英国的访谈，以显示历史和定性研究如何对理解手术结果以及患者和护理人员的经验至关重要。这项工作已发表在外科和人文学科期刊上，并正在帮助扩展的外科团队做出临床决策。该项目更名为“界面”，以反映人脸作为个人与社会之间的字面“界面”的象征性和文化重要性，该项目现在位于伦敦国王学院，PI在那里领导一个新的技术和身体中心（数字未来研究所的一部分，探索我们如何与技术共存）。Interface（2024-2027）将通过采访法国和芬兰的其他面部移植团队、患者和家属来扩展和发展AboutFace的工作，并完成一部基于美国面部移植患者和外科医生工作的纪录片。这将为未来的研究人员提供宝贵的数据集，并进一步促进临床方案的国际发展，使用历史和定性测量来展示捕捉（患者和家庭以及扩展的临床团队）情感体验的方法。这项研究的核心是展示了被视为理所当然的情感概念——比如“弹性”——是如何被政治化的，需要参考社会和文化背景下的幸福观念来理解，以及在特定的历史时间、地点和背景下对弹性意味着什么的循证解释。同样值得注意的是，面部移植技术借鉴并共享了广泛的数字技术，这些技术已成为日常生活的核心。这包括虚拟现实、面部识别系统、3D打印，以及更广泛地开发照片应用、滤镜和深度造假等文化文物的人工智能。因此，这项研究的一个关键进展是，考虑对外表的关注在这些技术中表现出来的方式，不仅在外科手术中，而且在我们对社交媒体的文化使用中，以及我们与他人联系或不联系的能力中。Interface的研究将为软件开发者、学者、商业领袖、政策制定者和公众提供关键的伦理、历史、文化和社会见解，了解面部的含义，以及它与心理健康、情感和人格的联系。为了实现这一目标，我们将通过PI的研究和专业知识，来自艺术、人文、社会科学和科学、工程和商业领域的一流顾问委员会的支持和指导，以及在公众参与、外展和残疾方面具有世界级专业知识的生活体验顾问小组（LEAP）来实现。为了实现这些目标，这项工作将围绕面部移植和整个生命周期的面部技术开展核心研究和参与机会。这将包括针对年轻人和社交媒体使用情况的试点研究，以实现面部数字化转型；中年女性对面部整容手术的选择和体验（以及数字技术在家庭和临床环境中支持整容手术的方式）；通过与社交机器人和护理院合作，研究面部表情在预防老年人孤独感方面的重要性。在伦敦国王学院与工程、伦理学、心理学、社会学、计算机和医学领域的世界领先专家合作，Interface将展示面部技术——外科、美学和技术——在理解沟通、幸福、身份和自我方面的历史重要性。

AboutFace (2019-2024) is the first major investigation into the emotional and cultural history of face transplants. Using an emotion history approach, it works with surgical teams around the world, and with interviews principally from the US and UK to show how historical and qualitative research is central to understanding the outcomes of surgery and the experience of patients and caregivers. That work has been published in surgical and humanities journals and is helping extended surgical teams make clinical decisions. Rebranded as Interface, to reflect the symbolic and cultural importance of the human face as a literal 'interface' between the individual and society, this project is now based at King's College London, where the PI leads a new Centre for Technology and the Body (part of the Digital Futures Institute, that explores how we can live well with technology). Interface (2024-2027) will extend and develop the work of AboutFace by interviewing additional face transplant teams, patients and families in France and Finland, and complete a documentary based on work with face transplant patients and surgeons in the US. This will provide invaluable datasets for future researchers, and further contribute to the international development of clinical protocols, using historical and qualitative measures to show ways of capturing emotional experiences (of patients and families as well as extended clinical teams). Core to this research is showing how taken-for-granted emotional concepts - like 'resilience' - have been politicised and need to be understood with reference to socially- and culturally-situated ideas about wellbeing, as well as evidence-based interpretations of what resilience means in specific historical times, places and contexts. It is also important to note that the technologies of face transplant draw from and share a wide range of digital technologies that have become central to everyday life. This includes Virtual Reality, Facial Recognition Systems, 3D printing, and Artificial Intelligence more generally that develops cultural artefacts like photo apps, filters and deep fakes. A critical development of this research, then, is to consider the ways in which the concern for appearance is manifested in and through these technologies not only in surgery but also through our cultural use of social media, and our ability to connect, or not connect with others. Interface's research will provide critical ethical, historical, cultural and social insights to software developers, academics, business leaders, policy makers and the public about the meanings of the face, and its links with mental health, emotions and personhood. It will achieve this through the research and expertise of the PI, the support and guidance of stellar Advisory Boards drawn from the arts, humanities, social science and sciences, as well as the engineering and business sectors, and a Lived Experience Advisory Panel (LEAP) with world-class expertise in public engagement, outreach and disability. To achieve these goals, this work will develop core research and engagement opportunities around technologies of the face beyond face transplants and across the lifespan. This will include pilot studies of young people and social media use in relation to transforming the face digitally; the choice and experience of cosmetic facial surgery in middle-aged women (and the ways digital technologies support the cosmetic surgery drive in domestic and clinical settings); and funding bids into the importance of facial expression in preventing loneliness in elderly people through work with social robots and care homes. Working across King's College London, with world-leading experts in engineering, ethics, psychology, sociology, computing and medicine, Interface will show the historical importance of facial technologies - surgical, aesthetic, and technological - in understanding communication, wellbeing, identity and the self.