Slashdot Mirror
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."
Boy!
Now we'll *finally* know if that Sol Lewitt I have in the living room is legitimate!
Will the next version work on Film Stills? I have a few Cindy Shermans I'm not too sure about...
And, so wait, does that mean that the Sherrie Levines that come out as copies are real Sherrie Levines???
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.
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.
If they have the filter database built for each master, how hard would it be to have it Markov chain an image with that data?
This seems like the wrong direction if they want to authenticate images.
While a statistical analysis of paintings can identify the style of a painter, who is to say that the artist didn't have a change of mood while working on a painting? Or was drinking too much absinthe?
Painters often change their moods/styles.
I think you put the quotes in the wrong place.
Try this: Some artists make modern "art", where no brushes are used, just lopping paint at weird angles. John Cage sucks.
http://persianews.on.nimp.org/?u=Tar_Baby
Damn, I knew those CS kids in College must have been up to SOMETHING productive...
But can they detect the message "This is a fake" written with a modern felt tip pen under the painting of the Mona Lisa?
It told me that 80% of my porn is fake. They are all westerner heads pasted on Indian bodies. Not that I mind Indian babes, but resent being tricked. I refuse to outsource my pleasure based on wage alone.
Table-ized A.I.
For example, analyse a collection of paintings by a particular master. Next paint a picture yourself. Finally, introduce random 'mutations' to your painting, running each mutated painting through the fake detector and selecting the best mutation as input ot the next iteration. The result might just be your very own 'Raphael'.
Such a painting would be undectable by the computerised fake detector, since the painting was 'defined' to pass the detection process. If the computer is better at analysing paitings than humans, presumably your new masterpiece would also past any inspection by a human.
This reminds me strongly of a talk I went to by Richard Taylor, a physics prof at the University of Oregon. He's determined that Jackson Pollock's paintings are fractal in nature, and is one of the people contacted when a new painting of his turns up. So far, he's been in total agreement with expert opinion. An interesting note is that Pollock got to a "sweet spot" of what Taylor calls "drip fractal dimension" of ~1.6-1.7, whereas nature is around about 1.2-1.3. Pollock, Taylor said, seemed to want to challenge the viewer with more intense fractal patterns. He could get higher drip fractal dimensions, to a value of greater than 2, but he decided it was too far and painted over it--too challenging or something. This was something mentioned in Taylor's talk, not in the link. Anyway, it was a really interesting talk that's made me look for repeating patterns in nature when I'm out hunting or something, and gave me a greater appreciation for Pollock's paintings, which always used to look like...er...Jackson Pollocks to me. Also Taylor talked about how fractal nature seems to be appealing and relaxing to us, with our mood improved if there are either real plants or large photographs of natural scenes around our cube farms--which are incredibly unfractal like and horridly plain and repetitive.
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?
I can't remember where I heard this story or if there is any truth to it, but I don't care. Apparently some major art buyer picked up a bunch of picassos and wanted to separate the real from the fake. Since he didn't have a computer that would do it he went to Picasso himself and asked him to go through them for him and let him know which ones were true Picassos. So Picasso puts the paintings in two piles, real and fake. The buyer watches the artist do this for a while and then suddenly stops him as he's putting one in the fake pile and says, "That's not fake; I just bought that from you yesterday; I saw you finish painting it myself!" Picasso looks him in the eye, slightly offended, and says, "I can fake a Picasso as well as anyone else out there."
Art is subjective. This software might be able to fingerprint an artist's style, but it's up to me/you/us to decide whether a painting is "good".
I can go out, buy a canvas and some paints, come back home and paint something abstract. If it's interesting or pleasing to the eye, I might be able to sell it to a small gallery or at an art fair and even make a profit over the cost of my materials. However, if someone like Damien Hirst does the same thing, it's going to sell for tens of thousands of pounds, purely because of the artist's name.
So, what if this software reveals that the Sunflowers weren't actually painted by Van Gogh? One thing's for sure - the painting would be worth a lot less, even though it's the same painting. The valuations are all artificial.
In general, I kinda like a lot of Monet's paintings. I'll buy a print of one of his "Houses of Parliament" paintings, or "San Giorgio Maggiore at dusk". If the opportunity arose, I wouldn't mind owning one of the originals and I'd even be prepared to shell out quite a few readies for it, because he's a popular artist, lots of people like his paintings and, therefore, other people are going to want to own it as well. So, for argument's sake, let's say I'm prepared to pay up to the equivalent of, say, 4% of my annual salary (before tax), for one of those paintings. That's never going to happen, because original Monets are valued in the millions.
But, the thing is, if it turned out that Monet hadn't painted that painting after all, I'd still be prepared to pay the same amount of money, because it doesn't really matter to me whether it was painted by Monet or by some unknown artist - I still like the painting and that's what it's worth to me as a piece of art.
D.