Technologists have produced a 3D-printed painting in the style of Rembrandt • Hacker News Board

Re: Technologists have produced a 3D-printed painting in the style of Rembrandt

#61

Post by logicrook » Fri, Apr 08, 2016, 2:49 PM UTC

antimora wrote: post #12

roywiggins wrote: post #3

If it were a -human- painting a fake Rembrandt, no matter how perfect an imitation, it would be called "a very very good imitation of Rembrandt" and nobody would claim that they'd in any sense brought Rembrandt back to life. Calling a very good forged Rembrandt a "new Rembrandt" would be pretty silly. Calling one generated by a computer a "new Rembrandt" seems just as silly. Just because it was composed by an algorit…

Computers are our new babies. We applause and cheer for anything trivial they come up with.

The problem is when parents start seeing baby's poop splatters as artistic expression. The equivalent with computers would be to call bugs features?

Re: Technologists have produced a 3D-printed painting in the style of Rembrandt

#62

Post by fghrthtb » Fri, Apr 08, 2016, 3:34 PM UTC

gglitch wrote: post #51

fghrthtb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, not entirely. Imagine a perfect replica of Rembrandt's brain connected to an artificial body, a painting produced by this machine would be a Rembrandt. Now imagine reducing the correlation between the artificial brain and Rembrandt's brain until you reach the level of correlation to that of the machine described in the article. There will be a precise point where the paintings produced by the device will stop b…

Not sure why you're getting downvotes. Sure, the argument comes off as sort of sophomoric in the face of the indisputable fact that there was an actual Rembrandt and this painting was produced neither by him nor by a low-fidelity replica of his brain; but I think it's interesting to think about. If we wanted to get real sophomoric, we'd apply the Ship of Theseus/Heraclitus/Lucretius line of thought to whether even a…

Thanks, for your reply. I think I'm being down voted because the idea is too general for most people to understand, also they get caught up in the emotional back patting that goes on whenever people get a chance to show their allegiance to the "group think". I'm getting pretty sick of being correct and yet ignored. As a younger man I thought I was just stupid and wrong, that was bad. Now I am older I realise that most other people are wrong and that I am usually right, I am not sure which is worse.

Have you misunderstood the meaning of sophomoric? You are describing your own interesting philosophical thoughts as sophomoric. Is this because people have told you that they are? Have you considered the possibility that the complexity and breadth of your thoughts in this area make them feel inadequate?

Re: Technologists have produced a 3D-printed painting in the style of Rembrandt

#63

Post by Dylan16807 » Fri, Apr 08, 2016, 4:28 PM UTC

nxzero wrote: post #45

Dylan16807 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh. I see the point in general, but the eye closing is a really broken analogy, and there is a difference between a bias and a preconception.

Yes, the difference between bias and preconception is exactly what, or are you being bias? Seriously, lookup the meaning of the terms and see if what they mean are what you believe them to mean.

A preconception is an idea. A bias is much more general. If you're putting in a table, and you don't make it quite flat, you have biased the table, but you have not instilled preconceptions in the table.

Re: Technologists have produced a 3D-printed painting in the style of Rembrandt

#64

Post by Dylan16807 » Fri, Apr 08, 2016, 4:32 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #49

Dylan16807 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What has suggested to you that the goal of this program is not creating something that looks to human experts like a previously undiscovered Rembrandt? (With emphasis on 'looks'; they're not trying to trick forensics)

They don't seem to have asked a lot of human experts for input. I think if they had done, the finished article would look different. In fact it's nearly impossible to nail down provenance of any painting without an historical paper trail. Auction houses regularly pay academics to make statements about provenance, but the statements are always questionable if there's no definitive record of sales and ownership.

The goal is something that looks like a real Rembrandt. Not something that has a convincing paper trail, or something that correctly carbon dates. The point is not to trick anyone, but to ask the question "based solely on your knowledge of how Rembrandt paints, can you tell if this is one of his?"

Re: Technologists have produced a 3D-printed painting in the style of Rembrandt

#65

Post by sixothree » Fri, Apr 08, 2016, 4:37 PM UTC

ma2rten wrote: post #16

I feel like it's misleading of them to say that a computer painted the picture. That makes it sound like all works of Rembrandt have been fed into a Machine Learning algorithm and finally the computer spit out this piece. After having watched the YouTube video, I fell like actually the picture was more or less photoshopped together from existing Rembrandt paintings. The role of the algorithms was "only" to generate t…

It's also very misleading to say that it's in the style of Rembrandt when there are so many factors that make his works unique missing from this painting.