Marc Gauthier

Web site revent.org challenges you to make the distinction between modern art pieces and gibberish produced by the site author.I didn’t fare too well, scoring 67%!

If you are in the Quebec City area this weekend, don’t miss Mois Multi 9, the annual exhibit of art works integrating new technologies. The February events are held at Meduse, an artistic complex located between St.Jean Baptist and St.Roch.

On February 11th, thieves stole four paintings from the Bührle Museum in Zurich. The works of art were produced by Monet, Cézanne, Degas and Van Gogh and are valued at 160 million dollars.

Swiss police offered a reward of 100,000$ for any information leading to the thieves’ arrest. In their search, they can count on Ingrid Blom-Böer who works at the Art Loss Register.

The Art Loss Register has offices in Europe and the USA. Their main goal is to maintain a database of stolen works of art.

How can such a database be relevant?

According to Blom-Böer, art thieves often believe that by the time the media attention surrounding their crime has disappeared, it’ll be safe for them to try and sell the paintings on the art market.

Enters the Art Loss Register. Auction houses, antique dealers, art enthousiasts and police can search the database to make sure a piece of art in their hands hasn’t been stolen. Thanks to that tool, the stolen paintings form Zurich can’t be sold on today’s art market.

The only options left for the thieves are to either sell their stolen paintings on the black market where they serve as currency between criminal groups at a fraction of their value or try to get a ransom from the museum they stole them from.

Yale University will offer, maybe as soon as Fall 2008, a new Computer in the Arts major. That program would allow students to develop and use software in the artistic fields of architecture, art, music, theatre studies and art history.

If the press release talks about computer applications in music and in the arts, there are no mentions of the work that could be done in art history. Two of the researchers behind this idea have interests in other fields: Julie Dorsey in architecture, Paul Hudak in music.

Only Holly Rushmeier, a data visualization specialist, would seem to be able to integrate art history in this new major. Her personal page indicates that she worked at the IBM Labs on Michelangelo’s Pieta in Florence.

Recently, I wrote about a team of computer scientist who developed a tool to transform 2D pictures in 3D objects. My efforts to convert two of my pictures taken in Paris were unsuccessful.Yesterday, I received an email informing me that the process had been processed succesfully. Modified 2D pictures of the Louvre and a Paris street are now available.

I must say that I’m a bit disappointed by the result, although the Paris street is a bit better. However, when compared to this street, mine looks a bit weird. Maybe my angle wasn’t appropriate?

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Can we call this Dailymotion Art the same way we speak of Video Art?

The opening of a new museum is always cause for celebration. This is more true when the museum is dedicated to First Nations.

On February 28th 2008, the Maison des Premières Nations [House of First Nation] will open its doors near Quebec City. It’ll be part of a complex that includes an hotel. The project sounds promising:

«In its materiality and its design of the interior-exterior spaces, the project underlines the absence of propriety or limit for the Huron Wendat: transparency of the exhibition halls towards the wooded side and the river, garden with medicinal plants and typical cultures of the First Nations.»

I wonder what type of shows will be presented in the museum.

Last saturday (Feb 2nd 2008), more than 200 people from the goup Improv Everywhere stood still in New York’s Grand Central Station for 5 minutes. Onlookers and tourists seemed amused and/or puzzled.

A team of researchers from the University of Virginia and UCAL, associated with colleagues from Italy, Germany and Britain, have recreated rome as it stood in 320 A.D. The project, which is the largest historic simulation ever, cost around 2 million dollars. Visitors are allowed to take a stroll through the streets of the city. It is even possible to walk through the bowels of the Colosseum. Visitors of the Web site have access to clips and 2D images of the project.

Related post : Moving on the Via Flaminia

A team of CompSci researchers at Stanford have developed a tool that can convert 2D pictures in 3D objects. By comparing pictures they took around the campus to laser scanners, they created an algorithm that reflected the links between these two types of representations.

An online tool allows everyone to give it a try. I submitted a picture taken at the Louvre museum in 2006. Unfortunately, I got a processing error both times I tried.