When computers look at art: Image Analysis in Humanistic studies of the Visual Arts

New computer methods have been used to shed light on a number of recent controversies in the study of art. For example, computer fractal analysis has been used in authentication studies of paintings attributed to Jackson Pollock recently discovered by Alex Matter. Computer wavelet analysis has been used for attribution of the contributors in Perugino's Holy Family. An international group of computer and image scientists is studying the brushstrokes in paintings by van Gogh for detecting forgeries. Sophisticated computer analysis of perspective, shading, color and form has shed light on David Hockney's bold claim that as early as 1420, Renaissance artists employed optical devices such as concave mirrors to project images onto their canvases.
Dr. David G. Stork, Chief Scientist of Ricoh Innovations, is a graduate in physics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Maryland at College Park, studied art history at Wellesley College and was Artist-in-Residence through the New York State Council of the Arts. He is a Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition and has published six books/proceedings volumes and has one forthcoming, including Seeing the Light: Optics in nature, photography, color, vision and holography (Wiley), Computer image analysis in the study of art (SPIE), Pattern Classification (2nd ed., Wiley), and HAL's Legacy: 2001's computer as dream and reality