After Van Gogh

Is it a painting? or is it a photo?
Well, it’s both. A photograph of a male life model that I whizzed through a simple algorithm in an app to make it look like a Van Gogh painting.
 
OK it is only a pastiche of the genuine article.
 
But what if you could use sophisticated algorithms to create a “new “Van Gogh or “new” Rembrandt?
 
Well, that is exactly what has happened in the Netherlands.
 
A group of engineers, Rembrandt experts and data scientists analyzed 346 of Rembrandt’s works, then trained a deep learning engine to “paint” in the master’s signature style.
 
So 347 years after the Dutch Master’s death we have a “new” Rembrandt.
 
The work is “intended to fuel the conversation about the relationship between art and algorithms, between data and human design and between technology and emotion.”
 
Well, where does this leave the art world where work of great artists is priced on its scarcity value if computers can spit out “original” work by Old Masters?
  
   
Read more