Art, Computer and Artificial Intelligence

Where AI created meaningful verbal descriptions of knowledge, I have taken the same environment and made meaningful connections between the concepts that underlie graphic objects. I'm insulating myself by being able to work in a higher level environment. I am free to create instead of keeping track of where I am. I can now work simultaneously with 2D or 3D environments; geometric offree -flowing shapes; creating and changing palettes more easily than opening and closing tubes of paints. I now control- the computer does not control me or direct me.

Artist Lillian Schwanz has found evidence which resolves the five hundred year-old puzzle of who served as the model for Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. According to Schwartz, the painter and model were one and the same. The Mona Lisa is actually Leonardo da Vinci's portrait of himself.
Schwartz came to this conclusion during a computer-based study of two seemingly different paintings which turned out to have a hidden similarity. Using special computer-based image processing techniques, Schwartz produced a set of composite images which juxtaposed Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa with the painter's Self-Portrait as an old man. The image processing removed the effects of color and materials used in the portraits to permit a direct comparison between them. The computer was also used to scale and align the two pictures so that the left half of one could be combined with the right half of the other. The result was a fused image with the unity of a single face which fits both paintings. Schwartz's analysis of these images convinced her that the same person was used as the model in both cases.
This unexpected answer to one of the most celebrated mysteries in the history of art can also clarify the unusual circumstances which are known to surround the creation of the painting.
For example, although Leonardo worked on the Mona Lisa over a number of years in a number of different cities, none of his business or household records contain any mention of a model who might have sat for the portrait.
In an article in the January issue of Arts and Antiques, Schwartz describes how her conclusions tie together a number of seemingly unrelated anomalies in the painting, its shadowy quality, the unusual dress, the lack of jewelry, the awkward pose and the split pair of unrelated landscapes on either side of the figure.
She points out that Leonardo 's delight in riddles caused him to plant clues in all his paintings and that the Mona Lisa was no exception.
When these clues are taken together with da Vinci's known homosexuality and life style, a picture emerges of the great painter creating a disguised self-portrait in women's clothes.
As Schwartz puts it, "That famous smile, so tantalizing for so many centuries is the mirrored smile of da Vinci himself.


Technical Background

The animation was realized with SYMBOLICA Hard- and Software, the graphics on IPM-equipment with own Software.

The American artist is best known for her pioneering work in the use of Computer art, induding graphics, film, video, animation and special effect.
Lillian Schwartz's education began immediately after World War II. She studied Chinese brushwork in Japan, followed by studies of fine art with Professionals such as Giannini, Kearns and Joe Jones. Her interest in the merger of art and Computer was aroused by the epoch-making Machine Exhibition 1968 by the Museum of Modern Art in New York where she took part as an artist. Together with leading scientists and engineers she has developed effective techniques for the use of the Computer in films and animation. She contributes to scientific research such as visual and colour perception and sound. For Lillian Schwartz, the Computer has become a research partner for the artistic Creative process. By using specific data bases and programmes, she analyses palettes and structures of paintings, sculptures and graphics from artists such as Picasso and Matisse to investigate the Creative process.
She also uses this analysing method for her work "Beyond Picasso", with which she entered the Prix Ars Electronica '87. Lillian Schwartz's works are exhibited by famous museums and festivals (Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Centre Beaubourg, Paris, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam-, Biennale of Venice, Cannes, etc.). Lillian Schwartz has been a lecturer in the USA and abroad. Her most recent discovery by using an AI Computer Programme is the identity of the "two Mona Lisas".


Titles of her works entered for the Prix Ars Electronica '87:

1 "Beyond Picasso", Computeranimation, 3'15", New Jersey 1986
2 "Homage to Picasso", Graphic, Yorktown/NY 1985
3 "Lillian's Statue", Graphic, Yorktown/NY 1985