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108B Pixel Scan of Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring

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Re: 108B Pixel Scan of Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring

#91
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We think that everything is made of things but we forget that everything is mostly made of nothing, and it's the gaps between things that make it all be. See also: atomic size vs distance between atoms in any structure, on perceptual levels the visual saccadic movement and how much the brain fills in the gaps. Nothing is quite something after all.

I hate this phrase because how do you even define "made of nothing" or "gaps between" when talking about objects as fuzzy as electrons, and how would you define where something "is" or "isn't " other than interactions? If an electron cloud is interacting with another electron cloud why do we say that space is empty? Because the measured radius of an electron is so much smaller than we observe?

Like you say, it's just a more intuitive classical analogy for people who don't want to waste good years of their life (like me) to understand the mathematical detail of theoretical physics.

The electron doesn't actually have a measured radius (in our current theories). QFT describes it as point-like excitation of an underlying quantum field. The only connection between our quantum theories (that is really just slightly hand wavy math) and reality is that our theories can predict the statistics of observing a particle or interaction in a given state. So maybe a slightly more coherent explanation is that for a given region between atoms in solid matter, the probability of observing an electron (or any particle) is extremely small. Its like a quantum mechanical cat who's territory extends across mountains and forests, you're probably not gonna stumble across it on any given day, unlike a (quantum) house cat that lives in someones apartment. More generally there are no big "lumps" in the wave-functions, it's very thinly spread like too little butter on toast.

Re: 108B Pixel Scan of Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring

#92
post #65
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get a chance to see some of the impressionists in person, they’re kind of mind blowing for exactly the same reason - you’re looking at a scene of a ship in a storm and seeing all kinds of nuance, and then you get closer and realize it’s all your brain filling in the blanks. From a literary angle - two books I’ve read that are absolute master classes in this are Italio Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” and “This Is…

Absolutely. I was at the Virginia Museum of Art where they have several Monets and 3 Van Goghs. They also let you get quite close to them… less than a foot away in some cases. The amount of texture is incredible. (What also struck me in person, though I had read about it previously, is how tiny almost all Van Goghs are. Barely more than postcard size in some cases.

You should probably fact check your statement about the size of Van Gogh paintings. Easily disproved.

Re: 108B Pixel Scan of Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring

#94
post #26

When viewing this I was captivated by the girl's lips. In the full view, the bottom lip looks not just full and moist, but slightly wet. Zooming in, it's a bit of a muddy mess with only a splash of white giving definition to the (anatomical) left of the girl's mouth. In my current incarnation I'm a fledgling novelist and one of the things I've learned is to trust the audience to 'fill in the gaps'. Although this is p…

If you get a chance to see some of the impressionists in person, they’re kind of mind blowing for exactly the same reason - you’re looking at a scene of a ship in a storm and seeing all kinds of nuance, and then you get closer and realize it’s all your brain filling in the blanks. From a literary angle - two books I’ve read that are absolute master classes in this are Italio Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” and “This Is…

“This is How You Lose the Time War” is brilliant. Highly recommend the audio book.

Re: 108B Pixel Scan of Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring

#95

Steve Mould just released a video about the microscopy technique that was used to capture this 3D relief of the painting: https://youtu.be/o-dZKBwbsis

Was it the same approach? The 3D relief has artifacts akin to ones produced by heightmaps

Click the "3D" button on the bottom-center toolbar to see the 3D scan artifact.

Re: 108B Pixel Scan of Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring

#96
post #26

When viewing this I was captivated by the girl's lips. In the full view, the bottom lip looks not just full and moist, but slightly wet. Zooming in, it's a bit of a muddy mess with only a splash of white giving definition to the (anatomical) left of the girl's mouth. In my current incarnation I'm a fledgling novelist and one of the things I've learned is to trust the audience to 'fill in the gaps'. Although this is p…

If you get a chance to see some of the impressionists in person, they’re kind of mind blowing for exactly the same reason - you’re looking at a scene of a ship in a storm and seeing all kinds of nuance, and then you get closer and realize it’s all your brain filling in the blanks. From a literary angle - two books I’ve read that are absolute master classes in this are Italio Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” and “This Is…

If anyone's in Minneapolis, see this theater production of Invisible Cities: https://www.southerntheater.org/shows/invisible-cities-a-toy... - it's fantastic.

Re: 108B Pixel Scan of Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring

#97
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get a chance to see some of the impressionists in person, they’re kind of mind blowing for exactly the same reason - you’re looking at a scene of a ship in a storm and seeing all kinds of nuance, and then you get closer and realize it’s all your brain filling in the blanks. From a literary angle - two books I’ve read that are absolute master classes in this are Italio Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” and “This Is…

I read a lot of sci-fi and because it's come up in recommendations I've tried two or three times to read that book, "This Is How You Lose the Time War". The popularity of that book along with stuff like N.K. Jemisin winning "Best SciFi book" of the year 3 years in a row prove more than ever that the vast majority of people simply don't have taste in the sense they can not decide if they actually like something or not…

Time War is NOT hard Sci-Fi. It’s a wartime romance that uses divergent technical evolution to create cultural distance and time travel to engineer social collisions.

The combination is fantastically human.

Re: 108B Pixel Scan of Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring

#99
Amazing, I feel like I'm zooming in to some alien city.

I'm sure people are thinking about it, but with high resolution scanning, 3D printing, etc., it feels like it should be possible to create extremely high quality reproductions of famous artwork at scale, and at a fairly reasonable cost.

Is anyone working on this?

Re: 108B Pixel Scan of Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring

#100

Projects like this are fascinating for reasons, I guess, unintentional to their creators. Is what you can see at this level of detail helping anyone understand the painting? Someone thinks so. So what do we now know?

I think projects like this help you develop a felt understanding of the painting as a unique physical artifact that is not fully reproduced by prints or scans.
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