Thursday, December 15, 2005

Art and Science, Part 1.5

More to illustrate the respective limits of art and science, researchers in the Netherlands (what's with the Dutch, lately?) have determined that Mona Lisa's smile is "83% happy."

From the text by Toby Sterling: "...the researchers scanned a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece and subjected it to cutting-edge 'emotion recognition' software, developed in collaboration with the University of Illinois. The result showed the painting's famous subject was 83 percent happy, 9 percent disgusted, 6 percent fearful and 2 percent angry. She was less than 1 percent neutral, and not at all surprised."

Neither am I.

No comments: