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| The new 'living' Mona Lisa uses artificial intelligence to make a digital version of Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting react to people in the room around it. The portrait can turn its head, turn her enigmatic smile into a frown and blink. Her chest can even rise and fall as if she is breathing [Credit: Living Joconde] |
An interactive version of the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci allows her to turn her head, pucker her lips, frown and even breathe.
The Living Mona Lisa project, or Living Joconde as it is known in France, uses artificial intelligence to transform the oil painting into a living, moving work of art.
While it does not perhaps tell us anything new about the woman in the painting – thought to be Lisa Gherardini – it perhaps lets viewers see her as da Vinci did while she posed for him.
The living painting uses motion sensing devices to pick up movements in the room, triggering reactions and 'mood' changes in the digital Mona Lisa.
Unlike the original painting, which hangs in the Louvre museum in Paris, art lovers will also be able to take home their own digital living Mona Lisa for themselves.
The team behind the project, which consisted of 40 technicians and artists, plan to produce digital Mona Lisas in a variety of sizes and formats, including miniature versions that can be placed on pendants.
Florent Aziosmanoff, who came up with the original concept, told the Telegraph: 'Now she can sense changes in her surroundings.
'Leonardo da Vinci tried to make her come alive, so it's appropriate that we've taken his intentions a few steps further.
'This is primarily an artistic project, not a commercial one, but we want to make paintings cheap enough for tourists to buy and take home as a souvenir.'
The team also plan to release a smartphone app that will allow people to carry around a living version of the Mona Lisa with them in their pockets.
To create their digital version of the painting, the team first used specialised computer software to capture a three dimensional wire frame image of the portrait.
They used computer technology that aims to mimic real-life movement so that when the figure moves, it appears to do so in three dimensions.
They have combined this with the kind of motion sensing and facial recognition devices used on video game consoles.
This allows the digital painting to tell when a viewer is looking directly at it. When no one is looking, the painting poses in profile as if lost in thought.
However, when the view looks directly at the digital Mona Lisa, it offers a slightly questioning smile.
If the algorithms feels the viewer is behaving in a way it does not like, however, the painting will darken and turn away.
Mr Aziosmanoff and his colleagues said this gives the painting emotions, moods and a personality thanks to the artificial intelligence technology used to drive it.
Writing on their website, they said: 'Emotions are what causes the immediate reactions of the character.
'They are manifestations of medium and intensive affects, usually caused by something that arises in the immediate environment.
'The mood is the general mood of the character, for a specified period - from a few tens of minutes to a few days.
'This mood will colour operation emotions, and therefore its reactions to events that arise.
'The personality of the Living Mona Lisa is itself defined by parameters determined on the classic structure of the "Big 5".
'These five aspects of personality are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.'
The team claim that as the 'life' of the painting evolves, these aspects of the personality will change and so the painting will react differently to different situations.
Author: Richard Gray | Source: Daily Mail Online [July 13, 2015]