Imagine the paintings great artists like Rembrandt
would have created if they had lived longer.
Or just ask a computer.
For two years, a group of researchers, computer
scientists and art historians have been working
on a project called The Next Rembrandt. The
goal? To use computers to create a new painting
in the style of the 17th century Dutch master.
First, the project team gathered data. They
decided that their target painting was a portrait
of a Caucasian man with facial hair, age 30
to 40, wearing a hat, black clothes, and a
white collar. They concentrated their research
on all the paintings Rembrandt did with those
elements and used 3D scanners to get detailed
measurements of the paintings.
The team developed computer programs that
analyzed the paintings. They were able to
define how Rembrandt would paint features
like an eye or a nose by studying dozens of
examples. These points of data became a roadmap
for the new painting.
In a way, the team had created a sort of puzzle.
Each feature became a piece, and then the
team had to fit the pieces together. They
used computer algorithms that measured how
Rembrandt would space features apart from
one another. How close or far apart are the
eyes? How did Rembrandt space them from the
nose? They used the answers to plot out the
new painting.
And the team didn’t stop there. Paintings
may look flat, but they are actually three
dimensional. Canvas has a texture, as do brush
strokes. The team used detailed scans of Rembrandt’s
work to study his technique and replicate
it in the computer model.
The result was a painting that didn’t just
resemble Rembrandt’s style -- it replicated
it down to the brush strokes. But how does
a computer paint a portrait? The answer is
in 3D printing.
The printer used a special paint-based UV
ink to create the new work. It laid down the
portrait layer by layer. The result is a work
that looks an awful lot like a Rembrandt painting.
This is a pretty cool project. The team didn’t
replicate a specific masterpiece -- they created
a new work by replicating a style. Imagine
a future in which computers can do this with
other art. We could finally discover what
happens in Love’s Labor’s Won!
Granted, even with this impressive display
you could argue the computer isn’t really
an artist. It’s incorporating prevalent
stylistic elements to create new work but
there’s no spark of genius deep inside the
computer mind. Until computers can actually
express themselves, which will first require
they have something to express, they’ll
never reach the status of master artist.
So what do you think? Will our future artists
be robots? What is AI’s place in art? Get
in touch and let us know! And make sure you
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