Can You Use a Game Camera on a Fine Art Painting to See Signature
Wondering Who Did That Painting? At that place'due south an App (or Two) for That
With companies racing to develop Shazam for art, we see what instant-identification apps really add to your experience in museums and galleries.
At the Betty Cuningham gallery on the Lower East Side recently, I noticed an absorbing painting: It showed a nude woman curled against a window, asleep, with the old New Yorker Hotel and Empire State Building in view and a fish above her, hanging or floating. I opened a smartphone app called Magnus, snapped a quick motion-picture show, and clicked "Use." Seconds later, I got that addictive, satisfying click. The app had found a match.
The painting was by Philip Pearlstein, according to the app, known for reinvigorating the tradition of realist figure painting . It was titled "Model With Empire Land Building." dated 1992, measured 72 inches by threescore inches, and was for auction for $300,000. In 2010, it had sold for $170,500 at Sotheby'due south in New York, the app told me. Magnus then slotted this information into a folder marked "My Art" for digital safekeeping — and future looking.
Magnus is function of a moving ridge of smartphone apps trying to catalog the physical world as a mode of providing instantaneous information nearly songs or clothes or plants or paintings. First came Shazam, an app that allows users to record a few seconds of a vocal and instantly identifies it. Shazam'southward wild success — it boasts more than a billion downloads and 20 meg uses daily, and was purchased past Apple for a reported $400 million last year — has spawned endless imitations. There is Shazam for plants or Shazam for dress and now, Shazam, for art.
The fine art-oriented apps harness image recognition technology, each with a item twist. Magnus has built a database of more than 10 million images of art, by and large crowdsourced, and aims to assist prospective art buyers navigate the notoriously data-lite arena of galleries and fairs.
Other apps are geared toward museumgoers: Smartify, for case, takes an educational approach, teaming up with museums and sometimes galleries to upload digitized versions of their collections, wall texts, and information nigh artists. Google Lens — Google's avant-garde epitome recognition applied science — is making new forays into the art earth. In June, Google Lens announced a partnership with the de Immature Museum in San Francisco to bear witness parts of the museum's drove. In July, Google began collaborating with Wescover, a platform oriented toward blueprint objects, public and local art, furniture, and craft — enabling you lot to learn the proper name of that bearding painting in your WeWork infinite or coffee store .
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There are some barriers item to creating a Shazam for art. Magnus Resch, founder of the Magnus app , laid out one: "In that location is a lot more art in the world than at that place are songs." Cataloging private artworks based in unique locations is far more difficult.
Copyright law also poses challenges. The reproduction of artwork can be a violation of the owner'south copyright. Magnus contends that because the images are created and shared by users, the app is protected by the Digital Millennial Copyright Act. Galleries and competitors, Mr. Resch said, complained about the uploading of images and data to the app; in 2016, it was removed from the Apple Store for five months, but Apple ultimately reinstated Magnus after some disputed content was removed.
Another issue is that image recognition technology still often lags when it comes to identifying 3D objects; even a well-known sculpture can baffle apps with its angles, resulting in the deflating, endless spin of technology that's "thinking" ad infinitum.
And then there is a more salient question for these platforms: What information can an app provide that volition enhance the user's experience of looking at fine art? What can a Shazam for art really add?
Mr. Resch'southward respond is simple: transparency. Galleries rarely post prices and oftentimes don't provide basic wall text, so one ofttimes has to enquire for the title or even the artist'southward name.
Jelena Cohen, a brand manager for Colgate-Palmolive, bought her first artwork, a photograph, at Frieze after using Magnus. Earlier trying the app, she said, the lack of information was a bulwark. "I used to go to these art fairs, and I felt embarrassed or shy, because nothing's listed," Ms. Cohen said. "I loved that the app could scan a piece and give you the verbal history of it, when information technology was concluding sold, and the price it was sold for. That helped me negotiate."
Magnus doesn't give you lot an fine art history lesson, or even much of a basic summary about a work; similar Shazam, information technology's a little blip of information in the nighttime. Smartify, on the other mitt, wants to app-ify what was once the purview of an sound guide. Concord it upward to a Gustave Caillebotte all the same life, as I did, and the app provides information that's already available on the wall, including the risk to click-to-learn-more. Function of the app's mission is ease of use and accessibility. People with visual impairments can use Smartify with their phones' native sound settings and the app is working to integrate audio. The app is elegant and straightforward, and the source is generally cited and fact-checked.
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Smartify'due south major limitation is that because the app teams up straight with museums, it merely works well in a few places. London's National Gallery, where I tested it, was one of them; it didn't miss a single painting in the permanent collection. But at the Met, where Smartify has uploaded a limited set of images, I spent a frustrating afternoon waving the app at paintings equally it failed to return even facts that I could read in the wall texts.
It's telling, perhaps, that fifty-fifty equally these apps build out their databases, some museums themselves are starting to shy away from apps altogether. The Metropolitan Museum, which rolled out its own app with fanfare in 2014, shuttered it last year.
"While the app was doing a lot of things well, we wanted to create something more seamless," said Sofie Andersen, the interim main digital officer at the Met. This translates into content that loads directly in your phone browser every bit a website, no download required. Similarly, the Jewish Museum introduced a new prepare of audio tours in July, all on a web-based interface.
"A few years ago, there was an app craze, and now everyone's entering this post-app phase in the museum industry," said JiaJia Fei , director of digital for the Jewish Museum. She noted that the vast majority of apps that people download sit unused on their phones. "You lot just terminate upward using your e-mail and Instagram."
Later a few weeks of trying out apps-for-art in museums and galleries, on street corners and in the occasional coffee shop, I plant that they did not increment the quality of my visual encounters. Although the quotient of information in Smartify is quite high when it works — I was able to learn more than well-nigh specific figures in J.M.West. Turner's "Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus" — the simple act of raising my phone to take a picture transformed a vibrant physical painting into a flattened reproduction. The actress information wasn't worth mediating my museum experience through a screen.
And phones are already everywhere in museums, transforming a visit into cataloging equally nosotros go. Ms. Fei referred to this equally "screen suck," and it's one reason sound is the preferred medium for the Jewish Museum. Like Shazam itself, the apps are best used for quick answers — a lifeline in a contextless gallery. What is that? How much does information technology price? Who fabricated it? (Hither, Magnus is the leader.)
The Shazamification of fine art is a product of a time in which information overpowers the naked eye. But the app shouldn't be our sole guide through the visual world. Walking around the New Museum with the Magnus app, I found myself breezing past paintings, non looking besides difficult at details because the camera was looking for me, and the app knew much more than I did. There was that little addictive, satisfying click of recognition. It was difficult to stop.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/arts/design/smartphone-art-app.html
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