February 26, 2018

‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ in the spotlight next week

Filed under: Art,Technology by Orangemaster @ 8:48 pm

2-stateofthear

As hinted to in an article about using the Rijksmuseum’s scanner to catch baddies, the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague will be using a Macro-X-ray Fluorescence scanner (MA-XRF) scanner to analyse Vermeer’s ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ next week, to find out more about the painting.

And lucky us at 24oranges HQ, we’ll be there and bring back photos if we’re allowed to take any, as we have ‘a man on the inside’.

Nicknamed ‘the Dutch Mona Lisa’, Vermeer’s iconic painting was last studied in 1994 during a conservation project. In those days, they had to take paint samples from the priceless work to examine it, something that doesn’t have to be done any more thanks to technology. Scanners and X-ray machines don’t even need to touch the surface of the canvas and can provide new insights into how Vermeer painted the girl and the materials he used.

Whether her earring is a pearl (I’m in the ‘no’ camp) or some shiny trinket and whether or not the girl had some sort of connection with Vermeer is still a matter of speculation.

(Link and photo: phys.org)

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June 28, 2017

Copyright for robot artwork, a future decision

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 9:28 am

Rembrandt-The-Child-and-the-Soap-Bubble-E40

A year ago when a group of scientists, developers, engineers and art historians from organisations including Microsoft, Delft University of Technology, the Mauritshuis in The Hague and the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam revealed an artwork called ‘The Next Rembrandt’ made from collating data of 168,263 Rembrandt paintings, it was about a new way of creating a work of art.

This year instead of having data and computers creating a Rembrandt, we now have a robot actually painting works resembling old masters, but the question then arises: who owns the copyright of these works? We found out last year that copyright cannot be held on artworks made by non-human animals because copyright can only be held by legal persons, so that means robots don’t count.

“Earlier computer-generated works of art, machine learning software generates truly creative works without human input or intervention”, and again that could easily apply to a painting rabbit. The argument is that since copyright can also be held by companies because they too are ‘legal persons’, there should be some sort of copyright on the artwork that robots produce. On the other hand, suing a rabbit or a robots over copyright seems like an exercise in futility and madness.

Despite all the different laws, rules and distinctions in different parts of the world as well as the ginormous amount of computational power available to us today, one day we’ll have to decide if we want artworks created by intelligent computers to be protected by copyright.

(Links: phys.org, theguardian.com, Photo www.artmarketmonitor.com)

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April 25, 2015

Dutch master made with coffee cups

Filed under: Art,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 12:15 pm

Vermeer-cups

Students from the American University in Dubai have made a replica of Vermeer’s ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ using plastic coffee cups or pods, as they are sometimes known. The original can be admired at the Mauritshuis in The Hague.

“After pixellating the image to basic color units, it was split into four equal quarters. the sections were then divided amongst four groups in his class along with heaping piles of the recycled coffee pods. hundreds of units later, and the image was compiled into the reinterpretation of the 17th-century classic.”

(Link and photo: www.designboom.com)

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June 26, 2014

Gold and pearls: Mauritshuis museum to reopen in The Hague

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 11:16 am

300px-Johannes_Vermeer_(1632-1675)_-_The_Girl_With_The_Pearl_Earring_(1665)

The Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, famous for housing iconic paintings such as ‘Girl with the Pearl Earring’ by Vermeer (see pic), will officially be reopened by King Willem-Alexander tomorrow. The Mauritshuis underwent renovations and refurbishing for two years and has been extended and made more easily accessible, with the entrance moved the main square. In fact, the renovation has made the building look more like the old building originally designed by Jacob van Campen in the 17th century.

Dutch Golden Age painting is the one of many good reasons to visit the museum where besides Vermeer you can also admire ‘The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp’ by Rembrandt and ‘The Goldfinch’ by Fabritius.

(Links: www.mauritshuis.nl, Photo of Girl with The Pearl Earring by Thebrid, some rights reserved.

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