Perceiving the Focal Point of a Painting with AI: Case Studies on Works of Luc Tuymans

Luc Steels, Björn Wahle

2020

Abstract

We report the first steps in investigating how we can use AI to study contemporary painting practices and viewer experiences, focusing in particular on the work of Luc Tuymans. We review first various possible aspects of painting that could be studied and point to some relevant AI techniques to do so. Then we zoom in on one specific topic: How is a viewer guided to the focal point of the painting. This is not purely a matter of visual perception but also of interpretation and meaning making. Painters deliberately create focal points based on sophisticated knowledge of human perception and interpretation. Inspired by their insights and practices we can use AI research to unpack the process and thus provide a more insightful characterization of how paintings are perceived and made, compared to statistically derived embeddings. We argue that profound challenges must still be overcome before AI systems handle the identification of focal points, let alone arrive at the rich interpretations human viewers construct of paintings or other types of art works.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Steels L. and Wahle B. (2020). Perceiving the Focal Point of a Painting with AI: Case Studies on Works of Luc Tuymans. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 2: ICAART, ISBN 978-989-758-395-7, pages 895-901. DOI: 10.5220/0009163108950901

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icaart20,
author={Luc Steels and Björn Wahle},
title={Perceiving the Focal Point of a Painting with AI: Case Studies on Works of Luc Tuymans},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 2: ICAART,},
year={2020},
pages={895-901},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0009163108950901},
isbn={978-989-758-395-7},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 2: ICAART,
TI - Perceiving the Focal Point of a Painting with AI: Case Studies on Works of Luc Tuymans
SN - 978-989-758-395-7
AU - Steels L.
AU - Wahle B.
PY - 2020
SP - 895
EP - 901
DO - 10.5220/0009163108950901