Computer Art

Computers: they make everything so easy these days. They check our spelling for us and help with maths, and now machines have added painting to the list of things they are better than us at. Researchers in Germany have found that an algorithm can accurately copy the painting style of artists as disparate as Pablo Picasso and Vincent Van Gogh – and in just 60 minutes.

The algorithm forms a “convolutional neural network” (CNN) which, in lay terms, uses object recognition to recreate the foundation image (which can be anything) in the style of a piece of specific art. In fine art, especially painting, humans have mastered the skill to create unique visual experiences through composing a complex interplay between the content and style of an image. Thus far the algorithmic basis of this process is unknown and there exists no artificial system with similar capabilities. However, in other key areas of visual perception such as object and face recognition near-human performance was recently demonstrated by a class of biologically inspired vision models called Deep Neural Networks. Here is an artificial system based on a Deep Neural Network that creates artistic images of high perceptual quality.

Credits:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/02/computer-algorithm-recreates-van-gogh-painting-picasso