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Using Computers To Weed Out Art Fakes
jackelfish writes "Reminiscent of handwriting analysis software used in the television series CSI, computers are now being used to evaluate the authenticity of works of art without an expert ever setting eyes on it. The technique identifies the artist by analyzing their characteristic brush or pen strokes from high resolution scans of previously authenticated works. Much like a fingerprint, these characteristics can then be compared to a work in question. The method, to be published in an upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences promises to reduce the subjectivity of art assessments made by human experts."
... promises to reduce the subjectivity of art assessments made by human experts. Except with respect to bootstrapping the authentication process in the first place.
And once the fakers get ahold of this technology, they can learn how to paint them so it passes the computer check with flying colors
Or they could use Pollock's titles, as most of them have the dates in them :)
For example, Number 8, 1949
Dada Mail - Program, Art Project or Absurdity?
OK, OK,
:)
Sol Lewitt is known mostly for making instructions on how to drawing/paint things - he mostly never did this himself - he would "Sell" basically the blueprint of what he wanted drawn/painted.
For example:
His, "Four basic colors and their combinations" would be a group of drawings that someone else did of, well, four basic colors and their combinations.Another example would be, 'Lines from the Sides, Corners and Center of the Page to Specific Points.'
LeWitt was sort of a precurser to generative art as we know it today. Anyways, since he would never draw/paint these things, he had no individual style, thus this new tool would be worthless for him.
Cindy Sherman would take photos of herself that look eerly like they're from a movie that you've already seen. From what I understand, she would actually find a still of a movie and appropriate, say, the dress of someone and then make her own setting to photograph.
This ones a little off kilter concerning the device from the article, but her photos would be unique, but very similar to something you may have seen before. here's a fairly famous photo of hers
Levine would actually go to an art museum, take a picture of a famous photo, and exhibut it as her own work. Even though its a copy of someone elses, it's still her, "original". Thus if you made a device that would test the authenticity of someone's photo taking style, a Levine would fail as her own style? but pass as someone elses? (who knows) example of her work
Art gets a little weird in the 20th century
Dada Mail - Program, Art Project or Absurdity?
Extrapolate all that data about each artist's technique, then turn around and paint a bunch of "authentic" art "authored" by those masters.
This is basically what the best art forgers already attempt to do. Give it a try if you think it's easy.
They already have "pencil sketch", "charcoal sketch", and "regular photo" settings at the picture booths down at your local mall. It's just a matter of running a filter over an original image and reproducing the image with the desired effects.
And how do you apply this filter to your brush strokes?
This seems like the wrong direction if they want to authenticate images.
They don't want to authenticate "images." They want to authenticate paintings and drawings. Hand made works of art, which are often three dimensional (look at an oil closely).
KFG
Go try comparing an early DaVinci with one of this later paintings.
Fun stuff you learn in college art history classes: Da Vinci, like a lot of artists, employed a team to do the tedious "painting all day long" parts. He, the master, would of course be an integral part of the process, but most of those are not his brush strokes.
But they were using the techniques he taught them.
You can't take the sky from me...
I'm sure this will work similar to a machine used by banks to read the writing on checks. Banks, rather than hire thousands of people to read the writing on checks every day, run them through a scanner which uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software to recognize what characters are what. Of course the machine has trouble sometimes, and spits it out in a special pile which the "auditors" look at and verify. The auditors then tell the machine that such and such a check said such and such, and the machine modifies its algorithm to recognize it better next time. With each passing check its accuracy improves.
I'm sure this is how they train their machines, and with each passing painting it gets better and better. The OCR at Whidbey Island Bank is about 80% accurate, and can sometimes read better than the people running it.
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
This is good work, but what is so special about it?
Using image analysis, "computers" these days do:
- Automatisation of drug discovery screening tests
- Diagnosis of skin cancer
- Detection of early breast cancers
- All sorts of QA in assembly lines
- And much much more, these are just examples you can find googling a bit.
Why is this news? If you go to any computer vision, image analysis or pattern recognition conference, you'll find many similar applications.