Amsterdam – Almost 400 years after his death, developers have created a new painting by Dutch artist Rembrandt.
When a new painting was unveiled in Amsterdam earlier this month, even an expert eye would be forgiven for thinking that this was a newly discovered work by the Dutch master.
But the image of a 17th-century man staring out from the canvas was not painted by Rembrandt’s brush, but built layer by layer by a 3D printer. Nor was the subject based on one of the artist’s friends or patrons, but on millions of data points extracted from the body of his life’s work.
‘All I can say about the outcome is that I see a person not a computer image. For me it shows that this marriage between data and art is still in the honeymoon stage,’ says Bas Korsten, executive creative director at J Walter Thompson Amsterdam.
Data is not only about targeting, personalisation or efficiency. In our Awakening Tech macrotrend we examined how brands are working with technologists to use technology in ways that touch the human soul.