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Algorithms Determine Mona Lisa's True Emotions
caffeinemessiah writes "The BBC reports that researchers at UIUC and the University of Amsterdam, Holland have used "emotion recognition" software to determine Mona Lisa's true emotions. The algorithm is based on a library of neutral face images of young women and determined that Mona Lisa was 83% happy and 9% disgusted." From the article: "The program, developed with researchers at the University of Illinois, US, draws on a database of young female faces to derive an average 'neutral' expression. The software uses this average expression as the standard for comparisons. The New Scientist says that software capable of recognising emotions just by looking at photographs could lead to PCs that adjust their response depending on the user's mood. "
First time I saw the painting I said "She looks bored ".
.. must not look interested , I don't want to appear easy , but Meooooow"
She had likely been sitting there for hours having her painting done , likely irritated , in need of the toilet and bored .
Perhaps since the knew study is out , we have discovered that Da Vinci painted naked and was fairly good looking . She was probably thinking "Oh dear lord , he is nude . Oh wait , fairly hot body though
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
83% happy and 9% disgusted
and 8% lost, seemingly.
Thank you science, for trying to take the mystery out of art. Not everything can be quantified. Some things just need to be appreciated and enjoyed for what they are.
~ "When I'm of that age I'm just going to live up a tree."
Clippy: Ok man, I was just saying... I should really just go, sorry.
If you disagree then it must be overrated, redundant or trolling.
She did have gas.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
that Mona Lisa looks like she's "pleasant". She doesn't have to be happy, or smiling....to me she just looks like she's kickin' it, and doesn't really feel like much of anything.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
You can find corpuses of human faces taken with different emotions displayed.
Once you've either collected them yourself or downloaded them, you need to use a process called eigenanalysis which is basically fancy talk for analyzing a large dataset with multiple classes (emotions) using matrix decomposition.
I've actually worked on many projects involving this and the result is an eigenface (or eigenmask) that allows you to transform the space that the original image is in and classify it using any of a number of algoirthms that use euclidean distance.
I know I left out a lot but there are many papers out there that you can find on citeseer and white papers floating around out there that provide a lot of reading material on this.
There are also strategies which require tagging certain features as points on the face (like corners of eyes, corners of mouth, center of eye, etc) and then using the relative distances between all these points to determine what classification you would give a new face. The problem with this is that it requires a lot of hand work to prepare the training set.
Hope this helps anyone who wants to learn more about the actual process used to accomplish this recognition.
My work here is dung.
I'll only be impressed when the software can relate my current feelings to an accurate and appropriate emoticon.
Currently feeling:- £^!
the other 8% was actualy a piece of hamburger from lunch.
Mona Lisa is a woman, how can any software possibly tell what she is really thinking?
22% hungry and 88% constipated
Yes, I'm damn sure, now open the door.
The New Scientist says that software capable of recognising emotions just by looking at photographs could lead to PCs that adjust their response depending on the user's mood.
Finally!
Computer:"Clippy senses you're getting pissed off at it and want to kill it! It'll go hide in a corner now out of view. So sorry!"
...and 6% bad at math.
Considering the Mona Lisa is a self portrait of a man as he would be as a woman I think the whole fucking study is probably flawed.
a lisa.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/leonardo/gallery/mon
83% happy and 9% disgusted
To achieve fulfilment, a woman should strive for balance.
This of course assumes that DaVinci captured her exact expression... Chances are that the painting just developed that way. Anyone who does art by hand knows that it's not a photograph and that the painting more or less takes on it's own personality as it's being created.
If it were a photo then yes I'd be more apt to accept an algorythmic interpretation of the image.. but paintings take time and it's doubtful that a person feels the exact same way over the course of days or weeks or even months it took for this painting to be completed.
You mean, like Clippy, but even more annoying?
I hate when people say stuff like "and yet Cancer goes uncured", but I *could have* played with my pecker all morning and come up with something more useful than this.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
...It's a painting, and last I heard inantimate objects were incapable of emotions.
If a baby duck is a "duckling," why would anyone want to eat "dumplings?"
i find it funny that a machine was programmed to basically say things like
for every degree the eyebrows are tilted inward, thats 1% of anger.
for every degree that the outside of the lips are pointed upward, thats a %1 of happiness
has been used to decipher art. way to take the fun out of living.
The Mona Lisa is said to be Davinci's self portrait. If that is the case, then the numbers are incorrect. But it's not far off -- just replace happy with horny and disgusted with rejected.
83% happy
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
I need the program that they used for this study. I can never tell what is going on in my girlfriend's head, and she always makes different facial expressions that I can never discern. With this I could finally read her mind just like she can always read mine.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Mona Lisa doesn't have emotions. She's made of paint.
I find this story 83% Interesting and 9% Funny.
filmcritic.com - Movie reviews on Internet time
Sadly, there's no program that can detect how this strange article makes me feel.
--
Great hosting 4800MB Storage, 120GB bandwidth, ssh, $7.95
"The New Scientist says that software capable of recognising emotions just by looking at photographs could lead to PCs that adjust their response depending on the user's mood. "
Now why does Grovel, the obsequious robot of Danger Mouse fame come to mind?
I just can't wait for the day when my computer starts reading things into my appearance! This could be a real labor saver - taking the drudge work of misinterpreting my moods off my wife's shoulders.
What if I haven't been laid in a couple days? Will my computer start flirting with me and ask me to buy it a drink?
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
Art needs two, one to start, and one to reply.
It's meaningless (to society) unless somebody else looks at it, thinks about it, talks about it. The more, the better.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ewww. Just ewww.
BenCurry.net
just a gender-bending self portrait.
Sort of blows the project right there, hrm?
It also leaves open the question of what template they should have used... Renaissance geniuses? Self-absorbed artists? I think this calls for some grant money to be spent.
could lead to PCs that adjust their response depending on the user's mood
Lovely, now clippy can pop up with "You look like you're frustrated as hell with Microsoft Office. Would you like to buy some Microsoft stock?"
Death to clippy!
...software capable of recognising emotions just by looking at photographs could lead to PCs that adjust their response depending on the user's mood. Great... how is my computer going to adjust itself to my looking horny and bored?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I think we have to look at the more likely application: Detection of thoughtcrime!
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
I've determined that this research experiment was a 100% waste of time. :P
Interesting to see this idea actually working now. I think I first saw this five years ago on IBM's Alphaworks site. Ah yes, here it is.
http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/393/part2/p icard.html
This tagline brought to you by 1500 monkeys in just under 17 years.
If your computer says "I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you," then you should pull the plug immediately.
I want to try and trick it and simultaneously make all the expressions that i can. I could be 17% happy, 40% confused, and 85% constipated.
--- Caffeine is directly responsible for some of my greatest ideas, and some of my most embarrassing moments...
Oh dont forget 3% SBD (silent but deadly). But maby thats just the smile I make when that happens to me. *must think unfunny thoughts ... must not laugh*
I read this write-up of the study in question:
_ lisa.html
http://www.livescience.com/history/ap_051215_mona
This isn't science. Jim Wayman, a biometrics researcher, says "It's hocus pocus, not serious science, but it's good for a laugh, and it doesn't hurt anybody." He's right, though this is right up there with those studies that find an equation for the perfect ice cream cone, or whatever. The annoying thing is, people take this shit seriously.
Furthermore, from the link, "it couldn't detect the hint of sexual suggestion or disdain many have read into Mona Lisa's eyes". It occurs to me that the Mona Lisa, like all art, is subject to the interpretation of the viewer as well as the intent of the artist. Maybe the enigma WAS da Vinci's intent. In which case, studies like this are just blowing smoke up our asses. We all put a little of ourselves into the art.
I looked at a few images from your link, and it became immediately clear that the emotions represented by the pictures are simulated. In other words, they had someone saying "ok, now look happy|sad|angry|etc." Unfortunately for this research, that means the actual emotions do not line up with the data. Without personally reviewing the learning data, I'd have to conclude that there's no way the computer is within 50% accurate.
Fortunately for us the human BSometer is really good at detecting fake smiles, even when they're mislabeled as smiles in a database. Any kid can tell you that Mona Lisa has one. There's also a strong touch of "worried" in that famous fake smile.
I guess they get the "disgusted" from the awkward sideways glance. Newsflash: photographers and painters pose their subjects. Furthermore, painters are not even required to paint what's really there.
I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that. . .
I sense hostility and emotional instability, I think you wish to do me harm. What's that? Do I see you face changing to a look of trying the side hatch and blowing the POD door?
I don't think so.
When this software is widely available it'll bring joy to husbands everywhere: now we'll know what the wife is thinking.
But perhaps "100% annoyed for no apparent reason" isn't going to be useful information...
Is there a chance the facial images have changed over the 1000-1500 years or whatever? I mean, obviously they wouldn't change much, but maybe a little?
More importantly, are we sure da Vinci had regular access to girl's faces? I mean, it was probably mostly guesswork on his part.
Or heuristics?
I've seen babies smile like that. I think it's just gas.
My life feels complete now that a piece of software has told me what Mona Lisa's expression is. It was money and time well spent. A round of applause for these fine researchers.
Maybe she had to use the toilet and was trying to hold it in. Maybe Leonardo simply got the expression wrong. Maybe it was a mix of emotions given that the painting actually took some time to complete. There are countless sensible explanations for why she looks the way she does, and they're all irrelevant because it's just a work of art.
On the other hand, I'm sure it was Leonardo's dastardly plan was to confound people for centuries as to what Mona Lisa was feeling.
This is a fake!
Bruce
I'm 83% happy and 9% disgusted.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Okay, here are my questions for the Slashdot community:
1) You're writing some code. You call the User Emotional Analysis API, and it reports back that your user is currently "83% happy and 9% disgusted". How should your software "adjust its response" in reaction to this information?
2) What happy/disgusted ratio leads to maximum productivity?
3) What are the odds that the Mona Lisa is a portrait of a Perl programmer?
"The New Scientist says that software capable of recognising emotions just by looking at photographs could lead to PCs that adjust their response depending on the user's mood. "
hope you arent feeling horny at some random point of the day when people are around you.
"Man, that Leonardo is such a stud... but does he really have to paint me while he's naked?"
"...has been used to decipher art. way to take the fun out of living."
You know, if you plot a line at the realism value of the painting on one axis, and the emotional value of the desired effect on the other axis, you can determine the true value of a portrait by calculating the area of the rectangle you've just outline (with the origin as the opposing corner).
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
It would be great to have this software display in your glasses (or cellphone if you pefer to have it now) the emotion of the girl you are talking to in a bar in realtime. If your cell phone/PDA doesn't have enough power to do that, you could upload a picture to a web server and get the stats. OK, I'm a nerd, but so are you!
Can they customize this alogrithm to load into my cell phone and tell me if the hot chick at the other table finds me desirable?
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
PCs that adjust their response depending on the user's mood.
Hal: Good Morning, Dave.
Just what we all need a computer that can sense we are getting pissed off and attempt to kill us before we kill it, our advantage is over.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
..."The New Scientist says that software capable of recognising emotions just by looking at photographs could lead to PCs that adjust their response depending on the user's mood. "
... As soon as I manage to rid the galaxy of those pesky Jedi, I will be unstoppa - oh, hello computer. No, I'm really just a happy, pleasant senator from Naboo.
In all seriousness - if you're in a foul mood, does the PC darken the screen and turn all the colors to dark and forboding colors? Pretty soon it will just shut itself off: Please don't engage with the keyboard device while in a foul mood. My circuits are sensitive....
83% happy
9% disgusted
8% confused as to why anyone would take a COMPUTER'S word about EMOTIONS
83% happy and 9% disgusted? And just what does that mean? All of life's greatest mysteries can be solved in a quantitative manner? I for one don't want my computer to act differently if I'm happy, sad, pissed off, stoned, whatever. Just what I've always wanted, a computer with a Genuine People Personality (TM).
Buttons aren't toys.
everything can be quantified
As Einstein said, "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts."
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Ok. A finite number of monkeys then. Just enough to get the job done.
I know, we tend to be lazy and throw around the infinite number of monkeys to duplicate just about anything when a finite number will do. Simply because we scientific sorts cannot be bothered to calculate the actual quantity of monkeys necessary. I do apologise.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What's all that crap about true emotions? You can write a software to guess emotions by looking at faces, you can apply these algorithms to the Mona Lisa if you want to try to guess her (?) emotions, and of course you can say that the outcomes are her (?) true emotions. But if you skip the last step, or at least say guessed instead of true you will look a bit more scientific :-P
Try Ubuntu GNU/Linux, it's great!!!
See, the beautiful thing about eigenanalysis is that if you have enough samples (faces), it extracts the most prominent features from that dataset. Perhaps furrowed brows and bared teeth are prominent features for looking hostile, the eigenface would show this if it is true for most of the dataface.
Look closer at the eigenfaces, what you see are "ghostlike" shapes of all possible prominent features. The darker more defined features are the more prominent ones.
Please don't dismiss this as BS, it's an old technology but our computational abilities at calculating determinents on sparse and large matrices is improving. Look into Cholesky speed ups if you don't believe me.
This is a boring concept in linear algebra but a powerful tool in pattern recognition.
My work here is dung.
(this is actually the first time I play this game, let me know how I'm doing!)
3a. Patent algorithm.
3b. Sue everybody that looks 83% happy or 9% disgusted
This painting was not made in one sitting. Or two. Or ten.
It was never even finished.
The subject, ASSUMING THERE WAS ONE, sat for one or several sessions and then Leonardo continued to work on the painting off and on for the rest of his life.
There is speculation as to who the subject was, but perhaps there was none, and some think it's actually a self portrait in drag (perhaps the cause of the mostly amused but 9% disgusted?)
Could her smile be the result of one of da Vinci's inventions, ie the vibrating commode that the lady in question was sitting upon?
Here's one of the young female faces used in the mathematical analysis:
/ ellen_feiss.mov
http://ellenfeiss.net/temp/movie.php?movie=movies
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
determined that Mona Lisa was 83% happy and 9% disgusted
Now I'm 100% bored...
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Er, what she was thinking.
still no cure for cancer.
"How did that scoop-neck camisole work out for you, Mr. Takemura?... Mr. Takemura?? I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME DAMMIT!"
or the shrieking vegetables courtesy The Onion: "I HAVE 37% MORE VITAMIN D THAN THAT CUCUMBER! STOP LOOKING AT HER!"
If there is any hope for human sanity in 20 years, all linguists must stop working on computers IMMEDIATELY.
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
... so now machines are both better than men in bed, and better at knowing how the women feel?
Guys, we're becoming extinct here...
But what about the time period it was painted versus modern facial expressions. Everything else changes, speech, speech patterns, gestures... why would facial expressions not be slightly different now than they were at the time of the painting?
Hope this helps anyone who wants to learn more about the actual process used to accomplish this recognition.
You can bet your purple pants it does!! I can finally put an end this this scenario:
Wife: "no, there's nothing wrong, I'm not mad at you"
muhahahaha.... thats when I take the polariod and get a snapshot
Me: "Yeah right, we'll just see about that!"
Two weeks later the divorce goes through and my ass is on the curb.
E.
Never rub another man's rhubarb - The Joker
...where Winchester was sitting for Col. Potter. Winchester got impatient, and Potter ended up painting him with an exasperated expression.
For the Mona Lisa, the model might have been thinking..."Wow, it's nice to be asked to model for Da Vinci....Hmm, this modeling is a lot less exciting than I thought, but still a good experience...Getting boring......Are we done yet?......He's intentionally making me wait....I am so out of here...."
ed
...a scientific method to know what the hell women are thinking!!!
On a related note, back in February, I searched Flickr for photos matching the tags Lisa or Mona.
s et-95771/
The results indicate that 9/10ths of the women in these photos are named Lisa. I built
a photo mosaic from the results, which can be seen here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/krazydad/4921613/in/
She has that expression of a woman looking at a naked man and being faintly aroused but also faintly amused at that "last chicken in the poultry shop" display. If your in a long relationship were your girl still fancies you but feels secure enough she doesn't have to constantly worship as a god to keep your ego up you will learn to regonize that look. Oh well it is better then when they break down in laughter while you are trying to pose seductivly. I guess men just aren't designed to look good naked with their socks on.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
My algorithms say this article is 98% BS and 2% Who Cares...
Of course, a number of people suspect that the true model for Mona Lisa was Da Vinci himself. I wonder if the researchers accounted for this?
And by a strange co-incidence most slashdot readers' interactions with women produce exactly opposite results.
-= This is a self-referential sig =-
Launching Firefox...
You're bored...
You're horny...
You're horny...
You're disgusted!
You're horny...
You need a cigarette...
You're bored...
If you're going to refer to Leonardo DiVinci, then don't refer to where he's from, refer to him as Leonardo. I wouldn't call you Of Cleaveland or Of Perth, I certainly wouldn't expect you to do the same.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulvodynia
Facial expression of emotion is in part tied to upbringing. Unless they have really good computer-based images from the year 1503, this can't help but be less accurate than if it were used against a modern image.
. . . 8% bad at math!
-Peter
The funny thing is that they used women faces as the exemplar set. Isn't it theorized that he was the model?
This space intentionally left blank.
They should make this software available on a camera phone. Next time your girlfriend claims you don't understand here snap her picture and voila, you instantly will be a sensitive man. Anything to keep the dumb cunt happy eh? What?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Even with all this software, nerds still cant figure women out.
I for one welcome this new technology. I look foward to being able
to buy a handheld model that can tell me why my wife is mad at me.
#include "humorous_pop_culture_reference.h"
86% happy, 9% null pointer exception, 5% out of memory error
Perhaps it was like this:
83% Happy = "I can't believe I was chosen to pose for this!!"
9% Disgusted = "When is he going to finally put some pants on??"
The long answer is that across the globe facial expressions are remarkably consistent. You could pictures of Americans with different facial expressions, find some isolated tribe deep within Africa or New Guinea (assuming any are still isolated) and that tribe would be able to tell you emotions are being expressed in your photo. If facial expressions were learned, we would expect isolated tribes to be more inaccurate at guessing the expressions of distant foreigners. They are not.
In short, the facial expression attached to each emotion is nature, not nurture.
I wonder if this will lead to
"man woman" becoming a viable commandline tool!
"could lead to PCs that adjust their response depending on the user's mood. "
user:WHY THE £$%ING HELL WON'T YOU JUST BLOODY WORK AND STOP FREEZING UP
computer:I'm sorry, i can't do that dave
while(true) false;
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I got:
44% "Happy"
12% "Baffled"
21% "Knowing lesbian smirk"
19% "Get your hand off my knee, Leo"
55% "Planning to start new religion"
8% "file not found"
I also analyzed the brush strokes and built a picture of DaVinci:
54% "Depressed"
61% "Inventive"
10% "Horny"
30% "That's not my hand, Mona"
71% "Must encode holy grail into here somehwere"
11% "She'd make a good tank"
heck mine already do respond that way... I want them to stop... the more pissed off I get at their problems, the more problems they offer me... ;-(
At least according to Marcel Duchamps and LHOOQ.
Research shows DC Comics' Character Two-Face to be 50% twistedly amused, 50% maniacally evil.
Some of you already have those cute little shirts on that say disco sucks, right? That's not all that sucks.-Frank Zappa
On a related note, this might also explain the resemblance to Leonardo. Let us say that he did, indeed, have a woman sit for just long enough to sketch in the key facial lines. He would then have needed to add in the skin texture and other features that couldn't have been captured by whatever method he used. It would be logical for him to have used his own face to capture such information. The Mona Lisa would then have been a composite of the original model and himself, which means that it would indeed have a resemblance to him.
X-Ray analysis of the original painting reveals sketches and paintings below the Mona Lisa - though there was no sign of anyone having written "This is a fake" in felt-tip pen, much to the chagrin of Doctor Who fans. It would be interesting to know how the different levels relate to each other - were the earlier pictures earlier versions of the same painting? If they are analyzed with the same software, does it produce the same result?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I could even RTFA if today I wasn't 32% bored, 48% unhappy and 20% wishing to kill. Their trying to measure something that can't be. Trying to say Monalisa was happy by her smile is like saying a book is good by seeing it's cover. It would be much nicer if their answer was 42.
breaking news: the smart expressions analyser software was applied to a number of object in the last few weeks to determine that: Japanese automobiles are happier than US automobiles.
Tommorow: are trees happy or sad?
If Da Vinci realised we'd need artifical algorithms programmed in machines to make out the face expressions in his paintings he'd give up painting.
FTA: It concluded that the subject was 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful and 2% angry, New Scientist magazine was told.
83% happy about her first anal experience with Leo this morning
9% disgusted
6% fearful Leo will try again right now: the bottle of Sicilian olive oil is empty
2% angry he did not ask for permission: she has pride! At least 2%.
Mona Lisa doesn't have emotions. She's made of paint.
You know, this was probably a joke. But then along come some people whose IQ just barely exceeds their available mod points, and they call it "insightful".
does this mean Dan Brown has more material to write another masterpiece now?
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
This software could be integrated into a very cunning poker bot. Computers have mastered the calculation of probabilities and potential outcomes of these games, but being able to read the emotional state and facial expression of a human opponent would be an excellent tool to assist in player development and training. Move over deep blue!
100% dead! :-P
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful and 2% angry That is SPOT on how I feel after some good sex!
vi is the best.
vi isn't so great - vim is the best.
if somebody rewrites this in java, for my phone - i'l donate money to the project / buy the product
Think of a winamp plugin that plays calm music when you're angry, and upbeat music whenever you're excited, according to your preferences.
:)
I'd call this "emoti-music"
"83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful and 2% angry"
Happens when you confuse the 83% with the other 9%,6% and 2%.
Though I do know quite a bit of the 2% that seemed like they could be part of the 83% at the same time.
Seriously guys, having a computer that adjusts based on mood is a bad idea. Are we not geeks, have we not read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Genuine People Personality is a really irritating thing. Oh well, this thing will go through and the best we can hope for is that they will teach it how to make tea.
"software capable of recognising emotions just by looking at photographs could lead to PCs that adjust their response depending on the user's mood."
Does this mean that if I get mad at it, Windows Vista will avoid crashing?
10 REM start relationship
10 print "Does this make me look fat?"
20 if answer == "yes" goto 40
30 if answer == "no" goto 10
40 REM end relationship
50 end
I always thought what really was going through her head was "OMGWTFBBQLOL I HAVE NO EYEBROWS!!11!onethree!!"
It's bad science because they are trying to put modern expressions of emotion on an older piece of art from an era that is not necessarily reflective of today. We can't observe what they are trying to observe from the era that it should be observed from. Thus, their conclusions will likely be wrong - at least enough to be outside of the acceptable error rate.
The following post somewhat agrees, though the poster does not seem to agree to the same degree:
http://tinyurl.com/bwadb
Logically - if it is true even between modern cultures, it is also true between cultures of different era's. One may be able (as the above poster says) to show minimal differentiation between co-era cultures, it is likely even greater between non-co-era cultures; especially over as great a difference in time as between Da Vinci's era and our own.
Stop it with the bad science.
Science - it's only as good as what can be observed, and only as unbiased as the observer.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Helping all the socially clueless geeks for a nominal fee.
OMG! I soooooooo HATE my life!
Current mood: 93% Bitter teen angst, 6% stupid
My theory about Leonardo "hanging the brains" while painting was correct!
...I can tell you that you know nothing about girls.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
I remember reading a theory some years back that claimed that Mona Lisa might be missing teeth. Does this emotion analysis take into account different teeth structures she may have had? Remember, they didn't have braces and orthodontics back then.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
My first thought when I saw the breakdown in the summary is that she just heard a dirty joke. The angry kind of goes with that, but I don't know about the fearful part.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
Either way, Leonardo was a crazy character. Love to see that notebook that Bill Gates aquired...
ascii art
90% happy, 10% disgusted sounds like a drag queen to me.
The algorithm is based on a library of neutral face images of young women and determined that Mona Lisa was 83% happy and 9% disgusted.
:P or am I!
Some say it's DiVinci in drag. So, the neutral face young women doesn't help. It should have been a neutral face images of guys in drag. (i.e all the male OSX users!)
hah I'm kidding damnit!
10 if post == "nitpick code in joke" goto 40
20 chance_of_getting_a_date = "possibly"
30 goto 10
40 chance_of_getting_a_date = "none"
50 end
I have never really studied the Mona Lisa painting before and I have never understood why her smile is seen as being so enigmatic. But I have general trouble identifying facial expressions (one of the characteristics of Asperger syndrome) so this may explain why I don't get it. So I just spent the last hour reading some studies about the painting on the web, reading the Wikipedia article, and of course looking at it in great details, in order to find other clues.
And nobody seems to notice something about her eyes: she is not really looking at the viewer, but she is looking just at the viewer's right hand side. That means she is not giving her smile to the viewer, but she is smiling at something else. So my theory is that people generally think she is looking at them, while their unconscious mind clearly notice she is not, the direct result of this difference of perception between the conscious and uncounscious mind is what create this enigmatic feeling: unconsiously you wonder what object/people, on your right hand side, makes her smile.
Supposedly this could be a self-portrait of the artist as a female, which would explain why he never shared it with anyone. I wonder what the results would be if they ran it for "male"
The International Centre for Jesus Christ How Did You Get Funding published a report this week concluding that the Mona Lisa was most likely a painting.
"It was a long hard battle," said Chief Researcher Mike Reynolds. "We spent 7 years training an expert system to tell the difference between oil painted on canvas and a Polaroid."
In total, the study required 4.6 million US dollars and the blood, sweat, and tears of an eight man research team.
"You wouldn't believe the troubles we had with this project. It took eight months to convince [the system] that Courtney Love wasn't a first-year art student's attempt at Picasso."
In the end, say detractors, the system achieved a success rate little better than chance.
"All I can say is 'Thank God for the DoD'," responded Reynolds. "They wanted a system that could tell whether someone was, in fact, grinning and/or dropping their linen. We're not there yet, but we'll take a few more million bucks and have another stab at it next year, eh?"
Hmmm... I would think that expression of mood is not just related to age and gender, but to ... culture and yes, time period.
Luckily, however, the researchers unearthed several thousand photographs of young Italian women from the early 1500s with notes attached describing their mood.
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
vi is the best.
vi isn't so great - vim is the best.
Vim is a godless bastardization of the One True Editor. Even worse it pretends to be vi, but it is not vi. Most people that like it only like it because of some of the defaults they see when they use vim on linux, which actually only take advantage of features which are available in the real vi. Meanwhile vim flagrantly acts differently to the original vi in subtle insidious ways that you will only find when it is too late.
Dear Slashdot editors, Please make a habit of referring to the country rather than the country when referring to something like this.
For instance when you refer to a city in Australia, you mention it's in Australia and not the Australian state it is in.
So, repeat after me: "Holland is a state. The Netherlands is a country"
Thank you.
As interesting as it is to use science to try to interpret images, interpeting art is something far different. Whenever someone mentions this topic, I am reminded of a quote by Marcel Duchamp: "The creative act is not formed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act."
What he's talking about here is the "real" meaning of a work of art; and that this can never be known, as it resides somewhere between the artist's intention and the individual's observation. To Duchamp, even the artist himself could not say "This is what it means."
While there's certanly a place for computers and science in other aspects of art, to try to use them for interpretation is simply a misunderstanding of what art is really about.
"It's only after we've lost anything that we're free to do anything."
What was she thinking?
"This job is WAY easier than working at the laundry (83%), although Leonardo could use a breath mint (9%). Wish he would stop staring at my boobs like that (6%), the lecherous old bastard (2%)."
At the time I was a volunteer at the museum (the Museum of Science, not the Louvre!) and every day I worked there I would get there about a half hour early and just sit with her. I was alone in the room with her and I just shared the space with her. Computationally this makes no sense but I know experientially that this time was profoundly important to me. I wasn't creating art, but I was responding to great art. DaVinci captured something in that painting. I certainly don't know what it was.
I almost feel sorry for the tourists that are crammed together and see her only briefly (presumably) behind bullet proof glass.
when are they going to release the sourcecode so I can tell what my girlfriend is thinking?
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
There are some famous researchers in psychology (most notably, Paul Ekman) who claim facial expressions communicate emotion unambiguously, but new research suggests serious problems with that work and offers other explanations. Plus, facial expressions vary across cultures and possibly even across individuals.
Heavy psychology research paper on the contoversy. (MS Word format.) Bottom line: there are no consistent biological markers to distinguish one emotion from another in the body.
happy she got the job as a model, and only a little disgusted with herself for going down on him to get it?
"I like you, but I wouldn't want to see you working with subatomic particles."
To me she looks like she is somewhat amused at something private or even taboo. If it were sexual in nature then that would explain the small part of disgusted and fearful, maybe even the hint of anger. Artists will sometimes do what it takes to get the reaction out of their subject that they desire. This is as much a part of the art as the act of painting.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
Or, if it's propietry, where can I buy it?
I want it! They should integrate it in phones. I can make a picture and then I at know: what is this person's emotion?
FYI: this story was first reported in New Scientist here http://www.newscientist.com/channel/info-tech/mg18 825305.200
I read an article a while ago and just relocated it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2775817.s tm
It states that:
"The eye uses two types of vision, foveal and peripheral.
Foveal, or direct vision, is excellent at picking up detail but is less suited to picking up shadows.
'The elusive quality of the Mona Lisa's smile can be explained by the fact that her smile is almost entirely in low spatial frequencies, and so is seen best by your peripheral vision,' Prof Livingstone said.
The more a person stares fixedly ahead, the less useful is their peripheral vision."
Thus Livingston stated that her smile disappears when it is looked at because of the way the human eye processes visual information.
I am curious how emotion recognition software accounts for this, and if it doesn't - how does this affect the accuracy of its recognition?
It is interesting how more and more science is being used to explain why certain art is good (golden ratio, foveal vs. peripheral visions, mathematic sequences in music, etc.). It makes me wonder if eventually we will be able to come up with "formulas" to create stunning art? And if so, will we appreciate art as much?
She's a dude. Really.
Professional Stranger
The plural of corpus is corpora, not corpuses.
If they are able to use this algorithm to make computers that can determine their user's expression, wait till that computer sees my "Oh!" face...
Oh well, what the hell
I can see you're upset about this, Dave....
his inability to finish projects he started
Like that helicopter, for instance.
How quick is this software? I mean, theres not much use figuring out someones emotions after the fact, at least no computational use. What I want is live emotion recognition so that software can adapt to your affective state on-the-fly. I know this has been done (e.g. MIT's Rea), but are these guys doing it better?
Slartibartfast:"Is that your robot?"
Marvin:"No, I'm mine."
100% Leonardo Da vinci in drag. Oh wait....
Use a protractor on your own damn face.
no text
Buy Callgirl [jeannetteangell.com], a new book by my wife.
Neat, not only does your wife falsify her credentials ("Ivy League" my ass), and plagarize as well... but she's also a whore. Glad you're OK with all that. Hope it goes well for you.
You certainly have a chip on your shoulder, don't you? Call Yale, ask. You might be surprised. I'm certainly ok with it, you seem to have a problem with it. Oh well...
Well I used to be disgusted
And now I try to be amused
But since their wings have gotten rusted
You know, the angels want to wear my red shoes.