To follow up on art forgeries I found an interesting article about a new computer program that can identify the artworks of different artists. The Department of Computer Sciences at the University of Haifa has developed a new mathematical program that will enable computers to know if the artwork is an original one from a famous artist or if it is of another less well known artist.

After the program turned the drawings of nature, people, flowers and other scenes to a series of mathematical symbols, sines and cosines, the computer was able to learn to identify the artists. Once the computer learns some of the works of each artist, then the program allows the computer to master the individual style of each artist and identify the artist when looking at other works, artworks the computer has never seen.

Professor Daniel Keren who developed the program explains that the program is able to recognize the works of a particular artist even if they portray different scenes. As soon as the computer learns a specific part of a painting, it will recognize other paintings even if they don’t depict the same scene. One example mentioned was paintings from Dali. If the computer recognizes the clock drawings of Dali, it will recognize other paintings from Dali, even without the clocks and so on for other artists as well.

As of right now the program is new and there are still things it cannot do, but it is certainly a step forward in the field of computer vision. This program can be helpful for those who do not know much about art and want to know if an art piece is an original piece or not.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071105091915.htm