August 28, 2021

Boing Boing: Artist trains AI to generate new pictures of herself

Boing Boing: Artist trains AI to generate new pictures of herself. “What [Olesya] Chernyavaskaya is doing here is subtly more interesting: Creating new iterations on a person that does exist. I wonder what it’d be like to behold thousands of photos of yourself that you never posed for? If you tweaked the GAN to display a range of emotions and expressions, maybe it’d be like a magic mirror, offering you visions of a slightly different version of yourself.”

Research & Opinion 0
March 23, 2021

My Modern Met: Artist Uses AI To Recreate How Famous Historical Figures Would Look Like in Real Life

My Modern Met: Artist Uses AI To Recreate How Famous Historical Figures Would Look Like in Real Life. “Have you ever wondered what famous figures from the distant past really looked like? San Francisco-based artist Nathan Shipley answers the question with his series of AI-generated portraits. He uses historical paintings and illustrations as the framework for AI technology to create realistic renditions of notable leaders, musicians, and writers who all existed before the advent of photography.”

Research & Opinion 0
March 19, 2021

Getty: See the Faces of People Who Lived in Egypt under the Roman Empire

Getty: See the Faces of People Who Lived in Egypt under the Roman Empire. “In Egypt, it was customary to mummify the deceased and create a likeness of them, often in the form of a mummy mask or an anthropoid (human-form) coffin. From the first to third centuries AD, after Egypt had become a province of the Roman Empire, the traditional practice of mummification continued but a new trend also arose: some individuals chose to be represented in portraits painted on thin wooden panels or linen burial shrouds that were affixed to their mummy wrappings. These mummy portraits were part of ancient Egyptian traditions and their preparations for the afterlife…. Discover more about these mummy portraits and the stories they tell, in the new Google Arts & Culture exhibition: Faces of Roman Egypt.”

New Resources 0
August 23, 2020

Google Blog: Portraits of healthcare heroes on Google Arts & Culture

Google Blog: Portraits of healthcare heroes on Google Arts & Culture. “In March, the UK locked down the country to contain the spread of COVID-19. For many this led to a heightened period of dread and anxiety, but also creativity and heroism. During lockdown artist Tom Croft created #portraitsforNHSheroes to galvanize artists across the country to celebrate workers on the frontline. Tom collaborated with the charity Paintings in Hospitals to give the collection a more permanent home, as it closely aligns with the values and ethos of their mission to improve health through art. As a result of the collaboration, Google Arts & Culture created an online exhibition of over 700 contemporary portraits that were submitted as part of Tom’s #portraitsforNHSheroes initiative.”

COVID-19 0
August 18, 2020

The National: Louvre Abu Dhabi joins global research project to analyse ancient mummy portraits

The National: Louvre Abu Dhabi joins global research project to analyse ancient mummy portraits. “Launched in 2013, the Appear Project focuses on the analysis of Romano-Egyptian funerary portraits, which were painted on wooden boards and used to cover the faces of subjects after mummification. The use of the portraits began during Roman rule in Egypt and extended towards the 3rd century. The portraits typically depict a single person, and the works were painted while the subjects were alive to be specifically used after their deaths. They bear personal details about the deceased, and their manner of dress and use of jewellery can also reveal their status in society.”

Research & Opinion 0
January 7, 2019

ABC News: German archive releasing photos of Dachau camp survivors

ABC News: German archive releasing photos of Dachau camp survivors. “A repository of Holocaust-era documents says it has uncovered a trove of photographs of survivors of the Nazis’ Dachau concentration camp and will make them available online in a searchable archive this spring. The International Tracing Service said Monday the 2,000 photos of survivors were taken in the first year after the war to help Nazi victims who needed proof of their imprisonment to receive help from relief organizations.”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
December 23, 2018

New York Academy of Medicine: Digitizing the William S. Ladd Collection of Prints

New York Academy of Medicine: Digitizing the William S. Ladd Collection of Prints. “We are excited to launch a new digital collection: the William S. Ladd Collection of Prints! In 1975, The New York Academy of Medicine accepted the gift of the William S. Ladd collection, which consisted of 671 prints dating from the 17th – 19th centuries, from Cornell University Medical College via Erich Meyerhoff, then Librarian of the Medical College Library. Since receiving the Ladd Collection, the Library rehoused and conserved the material.”

New Resources 0
November 20, 2018

Slate: Who’s Behind That Beard?

I mentioned this on RB briefly back in July, but now it’s launched! Slate: Who’s Behind That Beard?. “Together with Ron Coddington (editor of the magazine Military Images), Paul Quigley (director of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies), and a group of student researchers at Virginia Tech, [Kurt] Luther crafted a free and easy-to-use website that applies facial recognition to the multitude of anonymous portraits that survive from the conflict, in the hopes of identifying the sitter.”

New Resources 0
August 19, 2018

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Needs Help Identifying African-American Portrait Photography

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is looking for help identifying studio portraits of African-Americans. This link goes to a Facebook post. “This exhibition presents more than one hundred and fifty studio portraits of African Americans from the mid-twentieth century. To this day, both photographers and subjects remain mostly unidentified. Does someone look familiar?”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
June 28, 2018

National Library of Wales: 4800 Welsh portraits added to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata

National Library of Wales: 4800 Welsh portraits added to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. “Over the last 4 years the National Library of Wales has worked with Wikimedia to provide open access to more than 10,000 public domain images. These include the Welsh Landscape Collection, photographs, maps and manuscripts…. Now the Library is pleased to announce that nearly 5000 portrait prints, photographs and paintings have been placed in the public domain on Wikimedia Commons.”

Tweaks & Updates 0
June 26, 2018

TechCrunch: New technique brings secrets out of old daguerreotypes

TechCrunch: New technique brings secrets out of old daguerreotypes . “Daguerreotypes – photos made with a process that used mercury vapors on an iodine-sensitized silvered plate – break down quite easily. The result is a fogged plate that, more often that not, is completely ruined by time and mistreatment. However, researchers at Western University have created a system that uses synchrotrons and ‘rapid-scanning micro-X-ray fluorescence imaging’ to scan the plates for eight hours. The system shot an X-ray 10×10 microns thick at ‘an energy most sensitive to mercury absorption.’ This, in turn, showed the researchers where the mercury is most prevalent, thereby bringing up the image that was lost to damage or decay.”

Research & Opinion 0
June 23, 2018

Smithsonian Magazine: Museum Ties Portraits of the Wealthy to Their Slaveholding Pasts

Smithsonian Magazine: Museum Ties Portraits of the Wealthy to Their Slaveholding Pasts. “Photography has made it possible for pretty much everyone to sit for a portrait—or at least a selfie. But having your portrait painted by a genuine artist is still an honor reserved for the rich, the powerful or the friends of art students. It was the same in the past—only the wealthy could afford to have their likeness put on canvas, which is why our art museums are full of rich people wearing their finest outfits glaring at us from their good sides. But the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts is also highlighting the hidden warts, adding signs to its portrait collection illuminating many of the subjects’ deep connections with slavery, reports Maria Garcia at WBUR.”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
January 14, 2018

Meet your match: Google app finds famous art you look like (CNET)

CNET: Meet your match: Google app finds famous art you look like. “Sure, we all know what famous person we vaguely look like (I always get Geena Davis, which … I wish! She’s still in a ‘League of Her Own.’) But the blandly named Google Arts & Culture app will dig through thousands of museum artworks from days gone by to see if you have a truly old-school doppelganger. It matched me up with numerous paintings, but the app’s top choice was a Renoir. Although I doubt the woman depicted in his painting wore braces.”

Tweaks & Updates 0

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