http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-11/uoh-cla110507.php
[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 5-Nov-2007
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Contact: Amir Gilat
agilat@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
of Haifa
Computers learn art appreciation
Is it really a Van Gogh?
A new mathematical program developed in the Department of Computer
Sciences at the University of Haifa will enable computers to "know" if
the artwork you are looking at is a Leonardo da Vinci original, as the
seller claims, or by another less well known artist. "The field of
computer vision is very complex and multifaceted. We hope that our new
development is another step forward in this field," said Prof. Daniel
Keren who developed the program.
Through this innovation, the researchers "taught" the computer to
identify the artworks of different artists. The computer learned to
identify the artists after the program turned the drawings of nature,
people, flowers and other scenes to a series of mathematical symbols,
sines and cosines. After the computer "learns" some of the works of each
artist, the program enables the computer to master the individual style
of each artist and to identify the artist when looking at other works –
works the computer has never seen. According to Prof. Keren, the program
can identify the works of a specific artist even if they depict
different scenes. "As soon as the computer learns to recognize the clock
drawings of Dali, it will recognize his other paintings, even without
clocks. As soon as the computer learns to recognize the swirls of Van
Gogh, it will recognize them in pictures it has never seen before."
This new development is a step forward in the field of computer vision.
According to Prof. Keren, this field is still inferior to human vision.
"Human vision has undergone evolution of millions of years and our field
is only 30 years old. At this stage computers still have difficulty
doing things that are very simple for people, for example, recognizing a
picture of a human face. A computer has difficulty identifying when a
picture is of a human face or how many faces are in a picture. However,
computers are very good at simulating and sketching 3 dimensional images
like the arteries in the brain or a road network."
At present, the new program can be helpful to someone who appreciates
art, but not to a real expert in the field. If you are a novice who paid
a hefty price for a picture that the seller claimed is an exact copy of
a Da Vinci, the program can tell you if you wasted your money or made a
smart purchase.
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