Artificial intelligence in art conservation and preservation: Experience from the Ghent Altarpiece
Speaker: Aleksandra Pizurica, Gent University
Date: Tuesday 25 May, 2021
Organizers: Rijksmuseum, CWI and Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities
Abstract: Art conservation relies increasingly on multidisciplinary research including new sensing technologies and techniques for analysing multimodal data. In this talk we address important challenges for computer vision systems in automatic detection of cracks and paint losses as well as in overpaint detection and virtual restoration. We shall present our results in applying AI techniques to these problems, making use of multimodal acquisitions of paintings. The focus will be on the case study of the Ghent Altarpiece and on the experience gained from a multidisciplinary collaboration in the framework of the recent major research and conservation campaign conducted on the Hubert and Jan Van Eyck’s masterpiece.
Biography: Aleksandra Pizurica is Professor in statistical imaging modelling at Ghent University, where she is also leading the research group Artificial Intelligence and Sparse Modelling. Her research is at the intersection of image processing, machine learning and in-formation theory, and has been reported in more than 350 scientific publications including more than 80 journal papers. She served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology (2016-2019) and an Associate Editor and a Senior Area Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing from 2012 to 2016 and from 2016 to 2019, respectively. In 2015, she received the bi-annual Scientific Prize “de Boelpaepe” from the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium for her contributions to statistical image modeling and applications to digital painting analysis.
The seminars are part of the Technical Art History Series in Advanced Imaging Technologies for Cultural Heritage organized by the Rijksmuseum, the Computational Imaging group at CWI Amsterdam, and the Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities.
