[L’église d’Auvers-sur-Oise, Vincent van Gogh, 1890, oil on canvas, 74×94,5 cm, Musée d’Orsay]
A selection of recent articles on computer science and art.* Researchers at Penn State analyze the patterns and geometric characteristics of van Gogh’s stroke brush to detect counterfeits. [Article]
* A new software called Zotero allows historians to classify images, web pages and texts more efficiently. Could the image of the college professor surrounded by his/her boxes of documents be soon part of… history? [Article]
* A new technique allows graphic artists to change their images to emphasize one part of the picture to guide a viewer’s attention. [Article]
* The exhibit Le Louvre à Québec [The Louvre Museum in Quebec City] now has a microsite.
* Claude Monet’s The basin of waterlilies sold for 80.5 million Canadian dollars this week. In an AFP article, printed by several newspapers across the world, the conversion from British pounds to Euros is completely crazy. Forty million pounds is equivalent to about 50 million, not 80… Jeers go to Montreal daily Le Devoir for reproducing the mistaken conversion while cheers are in order for Cyberpresse. Perhaps the agency issued a correction that was not published? More details at Le Figaro.
[newyorkcitywaterfalls.com]
* Waterfalls will flow under the Brooklyn Bridge and three other spots the East River this summer. [article]
* How to detect forgery? Easy: you just have to check for the presence or absence of nuclear isotopes caused by nuclear explosions. [article]
* Who knew that John McEnroe and Tatum O’Neal had been captured by Andy Warhol? The double portrait is on sale in London on 1st July. [see the work]
* A new copyright law could see the light of day in the USA. It would allow the reproduction of works whose authors can not be traced. In Canada, you have to go through the Copyright Board when such a case occurs to fill out an application. Board then possibly delivers a license.
* Always the same debate: one commentator finds that art is empty.
[City of Shadows, Alexey Titarenko]
* I’ve been observing these pictures from Alexey Titarenko and I don’t get tired. In his serie City of Shadows, he stretched the exposure time of his camera to catch the passage of people on his film prints. The result provides ghostly photographs where passerbies seem to leave parts of themselves behind them… [see all images]
* In computer news, Carnegie-Mellon (PA) has developed software to determine the most likely place where a photograph was taken. An algorithm is looking for similar photos on Flickr… One step closer to the recognition of images by computers. [article]
A couple of weeks ago, I posted about research done by a Stanford team. They developed an application that try to render 2D pictures in a 3D format. You can read about my failures while trying their online tool and then my successes - or the other way around!
Another team of researchers recently came into light with their award-winning algorithm for 3D image reconstruction. Working at University of California, San Diego, Manmohan Chandraker, David Kriegman and their respective Ph.D. directors should bring autocalibration a step further.
For non tech-savvy readers, a mathematical tool like this algorithm allows the development of software that can transform your personal pictures from 2 dimensions to 3 dimensions. Just like the Stanford tool, you could get a 3D feel from those pictures of the Grand Canyon you took last summer!
Google and Microsoft are currently trying to put these ideas to commercial use. The Redmond giant’s solution is called Photosynth.
Further reading
An artist born with a congenital inability to view colours is now preparing for his first exhibit in London. And surprisingly, his phone booths will be red and his Barcelona recycling bins will be multicolored.
Neil Harbisson suffers from achromatopsia. This means he is unable to see world in anything but black and white. A meeting with a cybernetics specialist changed all that.
Adam Montandon was giving a lecture at Dartington College of arts in Devon when he met the art student. The cybernetics expert took up the challenge offered by his inability and provided a simple yet brilliant solution.
How can Neil see colours?
A digital camera is mounted on the head of the student. Connected to a laptop he wears in a backsack, coulours captured by the device are then transformed in sounds. The computer transmits those sounds to a prothesis placed in the ear of the artist who can now «hear» colours.
More informations (including a picture of the device) can be found on Times.
Of course, for those of you who might be humor-impaired, the picture used to illustrate this story isn’t the one of Neil Harbisson. It’s the one of Seven of Nine of Star Trek: Voyager fame.
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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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.
If I say leaf, what color comes to your mind? In most likelihood, you’ll answer green for spring and summer and yellow or red for fall. That’s an easy one. Now, what if I tell you words like «daily » or « media », what color comes to your mind? A team of scientists from M.I.T. answered that question by giving every word of the English language a color. The result is available after the jump.
Furthermore, I use this orginal idea to search for the « color » of artists like Paul Gauguin and Marc Chagall.
[ More after the jump ]
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