Art google gallery. Fooling Google: How to Compare Your Selfies to Portraits in Museums
For several years now, there has been an online alternative to real museums - paintings from MOMA, Louvre, Victoria and Albert Museum and other famous institutions can be viewed using the Google Art Project. How is this digital "museum" of modernity formed and how does it influence our perception of art? Luisella Mazza, Program Manager, spoke about this to Look At Me Google Cultural Academies on Brazil, Italy and Russia, which in early June spoke at the conference "Intermuseum-2014".
Luisella Mazza
Program Manager, Google Cultural Academy Europe
Why does tech company Google need its own Cultural Academy?
What challenges do you face when digitizing artwork?
One of the most challenging tasks is creating high quality gigapixel images. We usually give museums the opportunity to digitize only one painting from the collection in this quality. However, sometimes we shoot other types of works like that. For example, we recently published pictures of the Opera Garnier ceiling, and it took a long time to work on them. In addition, before starting to digitize, we tested our technology in Madrid in another building to see if we could create the images of the required quality. The ceiling of the Paris Opera is at a height of 18 meters, and the painting cannot be seen from the hall with the naked eye. We decided to digitize it so that you can see what even visitors to the opera cannot see, and consider everything in the smallest detail. When the project was finished, we were able to see even Chagall's signature in the corner, left in 1964, and this is incredible for people who did not have such an opportunity before.
Many people think that the Google Art Project does not change our perception of paintings for the better, because the artists of the past did not expect that their paintings would be examined in such detail.
It's great that the Google Art Project is provoking a debate about how technology is changing the meaning of the artwork, the idea of the painting, and the author's idea. But as I have already noted, cultural institutions themselves choose what kind of work they want to digitize, and we completely trust their choice. We only provide the technology and platform, as well as the ability to embed embeds with paintings on the websites of the museums themselves. In addition, we give users tools: we allow them to compare works, create their own galleries and share them.
How are scientists using the Google Art Project? Do you know of any interesting research?
Comparing paintings and documents from museums and libraries around the world can be a very useful tool. This allows us to compare the letter from Van Gogh from The Morgan Library & Museum, addressed to Gauguin and containing sketches, with the resulting painting, which is kept in the Van Gogh Museum. These digitized artifacts complement each other and give each other meaning, because the letter gives the context in which the painting was created. In the real world, we have no way of comparing them, because they are located in different countries and on different continents. If you, as a scientist, need to compare them, it is not easy at all.
Wheatfield with Crows, Vincent Van Gogh, 1890
Does Google Cultural Academy do offline projects?
Yes, we were involved in organizing The Man Suicided by Society exhibition dedicated to the work of Van Gogh at the Musée d'Orsay. One of the paintings, Wheatfield with Crows, painted in 1890, could not be brought to Paris because it was too fragile to be transported from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. That is why the curators replaced the painting with a screen with her photograph, which was created using our technology. This is a good example of how digital versions of paintings can be useful in the real world and in real museums.
In addition, in December we opened our permanent physical space Lab in Paris. This is an experimental cultural platform, several projects are currently working there: for example, a residence for young artists in collaboration with 89plus - this project promotes authors born after 1989. At Lab, they work on their digital projects. The "laboratory" also has a team of engineers, and in addition, artists can print their works on 3D printers, engage in laser engraving, etc.
Is the academy concerned with the preservation of digital art - for example, video games from the 1980s or the works of artists who created works for the Internet?
No, but we collect interesting ideas from our partners. If our partners wanted to place such content online, we would definitely listen to them. In addition to photographs, videos showing installations and other works of contemporary art are also published in the Google Art Project, because static photographs do not convey their essence and the author's ideas.
How will the Academy of Culture develop in the future?
We constantly come up with new technologies to help cultural institutions. For example, we recently launched several museum mobile applications at once: we came up with a universal scheme that our partner museums can fill, so as not to be limited to the experience that their sites provide. So far, such applications have appeared in several Brazilian museums: Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Lazar Segal Museum and São Paulo Museum of Modern Art (MAM).
In addition, we are trying to improve our “Wonder of the World” panoramas created with Google Street View. We recently published a panorama of the Cambodian temple complex of Angkor Wat and supplemented it with comments from historians so that users can not only look at this attraction, but also find out all the necessary information about it.
There are a huge number of people in the world who, in principle, are not averse to walking through museums, that's just too lazy to get up from a comfortable soft chair for this. And there are those who are ready to rise from it, but the financial situation or lack of time does not allow to go to another city or another country to see "Mona Lisa", "The Appearance of Christ to the People" and other masterpieces of painting. It is precisely for such people, and indeed for all lovers of fine art, that a resource appeared Art Project from company Google.
Google makes the world different. Thanks to her, we really learned how the Cosmos itself looks like, we got the most detailed and voluminous maps in the world, the most convenient and reliable postal service, a search engine and much, much more that directly affects our life.
Another incredibly useful service from Google is Street View, which allows anyone to walk the streets of many cities around the world without leaving their computer screen. And now we can not only walk along the streets, but also enter buildings. True, not in all, but in specific seventeen buildings, which are the largest world museums of our time.
This opportunity is given to us by a new service from Google corporation called Art Project, presented on February 1 this year. This is, in essence, the same Street View, but you can use it not to walk along the streets, but in museums.
At the moment, seventeen museums from different parts of the world are available in the Google Art Project. These are the Metropolitan Museum and Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Palace of Versailles in Paris, the National Gallery in London and many other institutions of this kind and scale. From Russian museums, the Tretyakov Gallery and the Hermitage are presented here. But this list will continue to expand and expand.
With the help of the Google Art Project, right on the project website, you can walk through the halls of museums, view interiors, paintings, sculptures, read captions to them, the history of their creation, biographies of artists, leave comments, talk about your impressions, give advice, etc.
The paintings themselves were shot at a resolution of 7 gigapixels (yes, exactly 7 billion pixels!) So art connoisseurs, if they wish, can see every crack in the canvases, examine in detail and enjoy the confident strokes of their favorite artists.
An application such as Google Arts & Culture has been very popular lately and I think it will be very interesting for you, or there is an opportunity to download it on a PC. I can only say yes, Google Arts and Culture can be installed on a computer.
Many began to use this program very much not because many masterpieces of art can be viewed in it.
Let's briefly tell you why it became very popular and then talk about the appearance on the PC. It will be useful and interesting.
What kind of application?
Google has released this application for a long time and its main task is to help you get acquainted with works of art around the world without visiting a single museum. 
You just launch it and you can even try 3D museum tours. We live with you at a very amazing time.
Getting to the bottom, it became popular because of one function - finding a double. You take a selfie and then the search for the faces of the pictures begins. 
At the end, you see the result, how much you resemble a stem or another character from the picture. Quite unique, which is why many are interested in this feature.
What else is there in terms of capabilities:
- to examine the exhibit in detail will not be a problem, we zoom in and look at the desired part of the picture;
- there are some very unique filters that you can use to make an excellent search;
- there is also a schedule of events that take place near you.
Thus, we get a very cool program that will help develop in a cultural direction and, of course, indulge in different features.
Download Google Arts & Culture on your computer
If you do not have the opportunity to enjoy Google Arts and Culture on your phone, then you can always turn to the web version for help, or just download the mobile version to your PC. 
If you have Windows 7, 8 or 10, then this is already half the battle, because it is on these OS versions that you can install the Android emulator.
Which are just full for today. In principle, any of them will suit you, because for this application you will not need much. If anything, here are examples: Memu (www.memuplay.com), BlueStacks (www.bluestacks.com), or Nox App Player (www.bignox.com).
To give you an idea of what to do, here's a short guide:
- we install the emulator by first downloading one of the files on the site;
- then launch and then you will need to select the future interface language and, of course, log into Google;
- search for "Google Arts & Culture" and install;
- we launch.
I can say right away that the search for a double in our countries is not yet available. But recently an update was released that made it possible to use this feature in other countries.
So it is quite possible that we will soon see it here. You just need to wait a little more for the update.
Outcomes
So this is roughly how you can use Google Arts & Culture on your PC. Whether it is worth doing this, the choice is yours.
And do not forget that you can use the program on a computer using the web version. It is still in beta testing, but it is already working pretty well.
Services for finding doubles by photography have been known for a long time, but Google managed to make money on this hype in 2018 as well. The company has added a feature to compare selfies to artwork to the Arts & Culture guide. After that, released back in 2016, the application topped the top free services in the American App Store. And received dozens of negative reviews due to the lack of Android support and restrictions on use by country.
The Village found out how the neural network works and whether it is possible to “feed” your photo to it while in Russia.
How a neural network works
New service "Is your portrait in a museum?" helps the user know if their selfie looks like any of the thousands of works by artists and sculptors from around the world. For this, Google uses its own facial recognition technology. After analyzing the image, the neural network produces a gallery of works of art on which the alleged duplicates of the user are captured. They are all accompanied by a percentage score for the accuracy of the match. In addition to selfies, the algorithm can also "feed" any other photo, but not from the gallery, but a reshot.
This google arts and culture app is pretty amazing. Feel real strong about my 40% 😳 pic.twitter.com/2iyexRkUG5
Pw (@petewentz) January 14, 2018
Also in social networks you can find paired photos that users themselves jokingly combined. Google representatives explained that a fake can be identified by the absence of a watermark with the name of the painting or a white strip between the images.
How to use the service in Russia
To open access to this section, you need to convince Apple that you are, for example, in the United States. Here's how to do it:
Log out of the system. Go to your iPhone or iPad settings, find “iTunes Store and App Store” and sign out of your current Apple ID.
Disable geolocation. Go back to the settings and in the "Privacy" item, deactivate the location of the gadget.
Change the region and language. Go back to the settings again, go to the "General" item, and then to the "Language and Region" and select the USA and English there.
Find the app. Go to the App Store, find the Google Arts & Culture app there and click Get.
Register a new Apple ID. When you try to install the app, the App Store will prompt you to create a new account. Send it to an email that you haven't used in Apple services before. Enter the United States as your country of residence. You can fill in the address at random - for example, Oakland, 481 51st Street. Then the state must indicate California, the postal code is 94608, and the telephone number is, for example, 510-201-5760. You should not tie a bank card to this account.
Activate VPN. After downloading Google Arts & Culture, take your time to turn on the app. To get started, install a VPN service — for example, Free VPN — and enable settings that simulate you on the US West Coast.
If, during the installation of applications, the App Store displays a warning about the suspension of your account, you will have to spend some time changing passwords over and over again. Then Apple will give up.
Launch Google Arts & Culture. If, after launching the application, a banner with a link to the service “Is your portrait in a museum?” Does not appear in the “Home” section, experiment with the settings. Try turning on Airplane mode, reactivating location services, or reconnecting your VPN. Changing your account or logging out of it in Google in the main menu of the application can also help.
Right now, only the lazy hasn't posted the news that Google has introduced a new version of its Arts & Culture app, which was released in 2016. This program for Android and iOS is a window to the world of art. Google has digitized a huge number of paintings and other works of art in high resolution. As part of this initiative, many articles are published and a map of significant cultural sites is provided. A recent update has added a fun feature based on a very complex algorithm. Artificial intelligence from photography is able to find a picture that will depict a person similar to you.
The problem is that the function of finding yourself in a painting only works in the United States. To get around this limitation, you need to use a VPN. Turbo VPN for Android is perfect for this. Just select the New York, USA server in the application and connect. Then open the Arts & Culture program and scroll down to the section where you will be asked to find yourself in the painting.
While the user interface is extremely simple, Google uses highly sophisticated facial recognition algorithms to compare your personality traits to portraits among the 70,000 artworks in the Google Art Project database.
