Announcing “The Art of Seeing: Aesthetics at the Intersection of Art and Science”

On behalf of GC Digital Initiatives and The GC Computer Science Colloquium, CUNY DHI is delighted to present the following talk. We hope to see you there!

“The Art of Seeing: Aesthetics at the Intersection of Art and Science”

Thursday, December 10th, 4:15-6:15p
Room C197
The Graduate Center, CUNY.

Featuring:
Emily L. Spratt, Dept. of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University and Ahmed Elgammal, Dept. of Computer Science, Rutgers University

In this two-part presentation, art historian Emily L. Spratt and computer scientist Ahmed Elgammal explore the uses of vision technology for the analysis of art and its philosophical implications for both aesthetic theory and artificial intelligence. Through an investigation of the most fundamental questions computer scientists are confronted with in giving a machine the capacity to see, we demonstrate the value in utilizing methodologies from art history as the field of computer vision has already, in fact, predicted certain categories of interpretation that aid in the analysis of art. Returning to the aesthetic debates inspired by Kant and renewing focus to the art historical theories of iconography and iconology that were prominent in the first half of the twentieth century, basic issues of object classification are examined in relation to vision technology. In this presentation, we hope to demonstrate the merit of bridging the fields of art history and computer science, and to underscore the new challenges aesthetics, in the age of artificial intelligence, face.

Tags | Art History, Computer Science, Departmental Events, dh, GC Digital Initiatives, The Graduate Center