{"id":2657,"date":"2020-09-08T20:52:40","date_gmt":"2020-09-08T20:52:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/2020\/09\/08\/this-artist-used-machine-learning-to-create-realistic-portraits-of-roman-emperors\/"},"modified":"2020-09-08T20:52:40","modified_gmt":"2020-09-08T20:52:40","slug":"this-artist-used-machine-learning-to-create-realistic-portraits-of-roman-emperors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/2020\/09\/08\/this-artist-used-machine-learning-to-create-realistic-portraits-of-roman-emperors\/","title":{"rendered":"This artist used machine learning to create realistic portraits of Roman emperors"},"content":{"rendered":"

This artist used machine learning to create realistic portraits of Roman emperors<\/a><\/p>\n

Some people have spent their quarantine downtime baking sourdough bread. Others experiment with tie-dye. But others \u2014 namely Toronto-based artist Daniel Voshart \u2014 have created painstaking portraits of all 54 Roman emperors<\/a> of the Principate period, which spanned from 27 BC to 285 AD.<\/p>\n

The portraits help people visualize what the Roman emperors would have looked like when they were alive. <\/p>\n

Included are Voshart\u2019s best artistic guesses of the faces of emperors Augustus, Nero, Caligula, Marcus Aurelius and Claudius, among others. They don\u2019t look particularly heroic or epic \u2014 rather, they look like regular people, with craggy foreheads, receding hairlines and bags under their eyes.<\/p>\n

To make the portraits, Voshart used a design software called Artbreeder<\/a>, which relies on a kind of artificial intelligence called generative adversarial networks (GANs).<\/p>\n

\n

What did I do during quarantine? 54 Machine-learning assisted portraits of the Roman Empire.<\/p>\n

For this project, I transformed or restored (cracks, noses, ears etc.) over 800 images.https:\/\/t.co\/yQWWIgfvjJ<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Dan Voshart \ud80c\udc21 \ud80c\udc12 \ud80c\udc13 \ud80c\udc22 (@dvoshart) July 24, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Voshart starts by feeding the GANs hundreds of images of the emperors collected from ancient sculpted busts, coins and statues. Then he gets a composite image, which he tweaks in Photoshop. To choose characteristics such as hair color and eye color, Voshart researches the emperors\u2019 backgrounds and lineages.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a bit of a challenge,\u201d he says. \u201cAbout a quarter of the project was doing research, trying to figure out if there\u2019s something written about their appearance.\u201d <\/p>\n

He also needed to find good images to feed the GANs. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnother quarter of the research was finding the bust, finding when it was carved\u2026 because a lot of these busts are recarvings or carved hundreds of years later,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

In a statement <\/a>posted on Medium, he writes: \u201cMy goal was not to romanticize emperors or make them seem heroic. In choosing bust\/sculptures, my approach was to favor the bust that was made when the emperor was alive. Otherwise, I favored the bust made with the greatest craftsmanship and where the emperor was stereotypically uglier \u2014 my pet theory being that artists were likely trying to flatter their subjects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related: <\/strong>Battle of the bums: Museums complete over best artistic behinds<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Voshart is not a Rome expert. His background is in architecture and design, and by day he works in the art department of the TV show “Star Trek: Discovery<\/a>,” where he designs virtual reality walkthroughs of the sets before they were built. <\/p>\n

But when the coronavirus pandemic hit, Voshart was furloughed. He used the extra time on his hands to learn how to use the Artbreeder software. Eventually, he joined a Reddit thread on colorized statues where people were posting realistic-looking images they\u2019d created on Artbreeder using photos of Roman busts. Voshart gave it a try \u2014 and went into excruciating detail with his research.<\/p>\n

Voshart says he made some mistakes along the way. For example, Voshart initially based his portrait of Caligula, a notoriously sadistic emperor, on a beautifully preserved bust in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But the bust was too perfect-looking, Voshart says. <\/p>\n

\u201cMultiple people told me he was disfigured, and another bust was more accurate,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

So, for the second iteration of the portrait, Voshart favored a different bust where one eye was lower than the other. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have been telling me my first depiction of Caligula was hot,\u201d he says. \u201cNow, no one\u2019s telling me that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Voshart says people who see his portraits on Twitter and Reddit often approach them like they\u2019d approaching Tinder profiles. <\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI get maybe a few too many comments, like \u2018such-and-such is hot.\u2019 But a lot of these emperors are such awful people!\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel Voshart, Toronto-based artist<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cI get maybe a few too many comments, like \u2018such-and-such is hot.\u2019 But a lot of these emperors are such awful people!\u201d Voshart says.<\/p>\n

Voshart keeps a list on his computer of all the funny comparisons people have made to present-day celebrities and public figures. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard Nero looks like a football player. Augustus looks like Daniel Craig\u2026my early depiction of Marcus Aurelius looks like the Dude from ‘The Big Lebowski<\/a>.’\u201d<\/p>\n

But the No. 1 comment? \u201cAugustus looks like Putin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related: <\/strong>UNESCO says scammers are using its logo to defraud art collectors<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

No one knows for sure whether Augustus actually looked like Vladimir Putin in real life. In truth, the busts themselves aren\u2019t all that trustworthy. In ancient Rome, sculptures often served an ideological purpose: Their subjects’ traits were supposed to communicate where rulers were from, to whom they were related or what they believed in \u2014 and not necessarily what they looked like.<\/p>\n

Voshart says his portraits are speculative. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely an artistic interpretation,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m sure if you time-traveled, you\u2019d be very angry at me.”<\/p>\n

From The World \u00a92019<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Published at Tue, 08 Sep 2020 18:56:15 +0000<\/p>\n

Europe’s First Artificial Intelligence Space Missions<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Europe's<\/picture>\n

Europe’s \u0278-sat-1 launch onboard Vega rocket<\/span>ESA-European Space Agency <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Europe’s first Artificial Intelligence Earth observation mission, \u0278-Sat-1, was successfully launched<\/a>. ESA’s \u0278-Sat-2 is now underway. <\/span><\/p>\n

Following ESA<\/a>‘s successful launch of its first Artificial Intelligence (AI) Earth observation mission \u0278-Sat-1<\/a> (pronounced Phi-Sat-1), the European Space Agency (ESA) follows-up with the next innovative state-of-the-art technology: \u0278-Sat-2 (Phi-Sat-2).<\/span><\/p>\n

In another historical event to advance European space missions, on September 3, 2020, ESA launched its \u0278-Sat-1, an enhancement of the Federated Satellite Systems mission on-board a Vega rocket from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u0278-Sat-1 mission is to demonstrate how satellite data, coupled with advanced onboard digital technologies, can bring benefits to businesses, industry, and science.<\/span><\/p>\n

Europe’s first Artificial Intelligence in space’s mission: AI cloud detection, atmospheric and space science observations<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\"Europe's<\/picture>
PICosatellite for Atmospheric and Space Science Observations (PICASSO CubeSat) designed to investigate the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere, Source: \u00a9BISA\/ESA<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The main task of the AI chip on \u0278-Sat-1 is to comb through huge sets of images and filter out the ones of low-quality due to cloud coverage. <\/span><\/p>\n

The main advantage of processing large amounts of data on-board is that it makes the delivery to Earth more efficient as the AI has already removed the cloudy images. <\/span><\/p>\n

The AI cloud detection experiment is going to validate the performance of the on-board inference engine based on a machine learning algorithm for cloud detection.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u0278-Sat-1 AI<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\"Europe's<\/picture>
This is the small yet powerful \u0278-Sat-1 AI, in case you were fantasizing with a futuristic AI robot, <\/span>Source: CERN\/M. Brice, ESA<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 ESA has been working with various partners to demonstrate the potential of Artificial Intelligence and its applications in space to develop \u0278-Sat and to enhance the FSSCat mission. <\/span><\/p>\n

The hyperspectral camera on one of the two CubeSats is going to collect a huge number of images of planet Earth. Some of these images will have to be discarded due to cloud coverage. <\/span><\/p>\n

As a way of saving time and human effort back on Earth, the \u0278-Sat Artificial Intelligence chip is going to identify the unsuitable images and filter them out, only sending the images which contain usable data. <\/span><\/p>\n

“The great interest and learning experience we gathered with \u0278-Sat-1 encouraged us to continue with \u0278-Sat-2. The positive feedback we received after evaluating 16 great mission concepts for \u0278-Sat-2 gives us the signal to continue preparing AI technology and issuing more \u0278-Sat calls in the coming years, said Josep Rosello, Head of Technology Coordination and Frequency Management Section at ESA. <\/span><\/p>\n

“\u0278-Sat-2 is the next step in ESA’s drive for continuous innovation in Earth observation, which was initiated with the creation of the \u0278-Lab in 2017, and the launch of \u0278-Sat-1 on September 3 this year. \u0278-Sat-2 will further push the frontier of technology and open up new opportunities for the space and data analytics industry,” added ESA’s Director for Earth Observation, Josef Aschbacher.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u0278-Sat-2 AI<\/span><\/h2>\n

The \u0278-Sat-2 mission will further demonstrate the capabilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology for Earth observations following up from \u0278-Sat-1. The use of AI is going to lead to novel ways of collecting, distributing, and analyzing data collected in space about planet Earth. <\/span><\/p>\n

Now ESA has announced that a panel of ESA experts has selected the mission proposed by a consortium as the winning idea. The consortium is led by Open Cosmos. <\/span><\/p>\n

The consortium includes six different European countries and includes CGI, Ubotica, Simera CH Innovative, CEiiA, GEO-K, and KP Labs as partners and sub-contractors. If negotiations are successful, the \u0278-sat-2 AI satellite will be ready to start its mission just 16 months after the agreement.<\/span><\/p>\n

The new \u0278-Sat-2 mission has been planned to address a wide range of Artificial Intelligence applications which include transforming a satellite image into a street map, cloud detection in order to reduce the huge volume of data that needs to be downloaded to the ground base, autonomous detection and classification of maritime vessels<\/a>, forest monitoring and anomaly detection. <\/span><\/p>\n

Flying in a Sun-synchronous orbit, the payload will include the AI processor Intel Movidius Myriad 2 from Ubotica. The AI processor was already adopted on the \u0278-Sat-1 mission.<\/span><\/p>\n

Expressing his excitement about the successful launch of the \u0278-Sat-1, Massimiliano Pastera, \u0278-Sat-1 and \u0278-Sat-2 Officer at ESA said that the launch of \u0278-Sat-1 will allow them “to understand the use of AI for cloud detection, and \u0278-Sat-2 will represent a flying platform and give us the opportunity to experiment with multiple applications, as well as verify the enabling capabilities of on-board AI for Earth observation.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Related Articles:<\/strong> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Published at Tue, 08 Sep 2020 18:00:00 +0000<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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