Do computers understand art? Posted by Xeno on December 24, 2009
A team of researchers from the University of Girona and the Max
Planck Institute in Germany has shown that some mathematical
algorithms provide clues about the artistic style of a painting.
The composition of colours or certain aesthetic measurements can
already be quantified by a computer, but machines are still far
from being able to interpret art in the way that people do. How
does one place an artwork in a particular artistic period? This
is the question raised by scientists from the Laboratory of
Graphics and Image in the University of Girona and the Max
Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, in Germany. The
researchers have shown that certain artificial vision algorithms
mean a computer can be programmed to “understand” an image and
differentiate between artistic styles based on low-level
pictorial information. Human classification strategies, however,
include medium and high-level concepts. Low-level pictorial
information encompasse