I did all my best to smile

We are delighted to announce that Tomas Vandecasteele has joined LUCA School of Arts and KU Leuven as a new PhD researcher under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Maarten Coëgnarts.

Over the next six years, Tomas will pursue an interdisciplinary project at the crossroads of neuroscience, philosophy, and portrait photography. His research explores the concept of dynamic meaning-making in photography—examining how the meaning of an image is not fixed, but continually shaped by the perceptual and emotional engagement of the viewer.

This artistic-scientific research explores the role of perception, interpretation, and expectation in contemporary portrait photography, with a particular focus on the smiling portrait. By combining insights from neuroscience (predictive processing theory ) and philosophy with photographic experiments, the research challenges the apparent transparency and legibility of facial expressions (in particular) and photography (in general).

Contrary to traditional views that directly link a smile to happiness, this study argues that meaning is a dynamic and contextually determined construct.

The project contributes to the theoretical development of predictive processing within an artistic context, while at the same time casting a critical light on cultural conventions, emotion recognition technologies (such as FER), and visual representation in the digital age. The smiling portrait is not treated as a subject, but as a tool to explore broader questions about meaning, context, and visual perception.

This doctoral research was made possible by KU Leuven and LUCA School of Arts under the supervision of Prof. Maarten Coëgnarts, Dr. Sander Van de Cruys, Prof. Leen Engelen, and Prof. Hans Maes.

https://www.tomasvandecasteele.com/intro