I came across a press release earlier today about digital paintings that change based on your emotional state.  This looks interesting but I’m not sure how easy it would be for your average artist to use the technology.

Computer scientists from Bath and Boston have developed electronic artwork that changes to match the mood of the person who is looking at it.

Using images collected through a web cam, special software recognises eight key facial features that characterise the emotional state of the person viewing the artwork.

It then adapts the colours and brush strokes of the digital artwork to suit the changing mood of the viewer.

For example, when the viewer is angry the colours are dark and appear to have been applied to the canvas with more violent brush strokes.

If their expression changes to happy, the artwork adapts so that the colours are vibrant and more subtly applied.

The project forms part of on-going research looking to develop a range of advanced artwork tools for use in the computer graphics industry.

This has already resulted in software which produces highly-detailed artistic versions of photographs, and allows designers to create animations directly from digital footage.

“The programme analyses the image for eight facial expressions, such as the position and shape of the mouth, the openness of the eyes, and the angle of the brows, to work out the emotional state of the viewer,” said Dr John Collomosse from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bath.

“It does all of this in real time, meaning that as the viewer’s emotions change the artwork responds accordingly.

“This results in a digital canvas that smoothly varies its colours and style, and provides a novel interactive artistic experience.

“This kind of empathic painting only needs a desk top computer and a webcam to work, so once you have the programme and have calibrated it for the individual viewer, you are ready to start creating personalised art based on your mood.

“The empathic painting is really an experiment into the feasibility of using high level control parameters, such as emotional state, to replace the many low-level tools that users currently have at their disposal to affect the output of artistic rendering.”

The empathic painting project was carried out with Maria Shugrina and Margrit Betke from the University of Boston.

The images used in the project were created by the researchers using advanced artistic rendering techniques which give the computer-generated artwork the appearance of having been painted onto canvas.

More information on the empathic painting project, including a video demonstration, is available on the project website (see related links section).

The research was recently presented at the fourth International Symposium on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering (NPAR) conference in Annecy as part of the International Animation Festival.

I was thinking about a couple of details I left out of my last post about my interview with Olan tonight.

Olan Montgomery is very tuned into people’s eyes and in his paintings he focuses on the eyes, esp in the portraits.  In one case Olan showed me the eyes of a portrait where all the details of that person’s concern with recognition and copyrights was shown in symbols reflected in her eyes.  I don’t think this is the portait he showed me but it’s as close as I can find on his site.

When you look at the eyes closely you’ll see all kinds of things.

Speaking of seeing the soul of person in their eyes, I asked Olan to tell me what he saw in my eyes.   Honestly, being a Scorpio, I usually try to read others and don’t want them to see into me.  But I think we all really want to be known as well (and it would be curious to see what kind of Portrait Olan would do of me).

Olan did not really want to say at first what he saw in my eyes - he sorta brushed over it.  Then I asked again - and he said I was afraid of dying without having really lived and done things I wanted to do in my life yet.  He said he could see, in my eyes, that I was pre-occurpied with that - and that I did not need to worry so much about it - that what I wanted I could have now.

We discussed a couple of other things about why I started painting again and Olan said he’d like to own one of my paintings - he liked them. 

Olan talked a lot about his childhood, his family, the way he was brought up, and his Mother, Eslye .  He’s very close to his mother and feels she is more charitable by nature than he is (which is saying a lot because Olan appears to be a very charitable person - so if his mother is more than that, she must be very charitable).  He talked about how his mother would take his sibelings and some of the orphaned children near where he grew up to Museums as often as she could and how her life was devoted to art - and is devoted to art.   He mentioned that his father had a stroke 12 years ago and she takes care of him but never talks much about it.  Olan also talked about his twin brother and how they took very different paths in life, his brother being in the army at one time, and really going after totally different things - and their orientation was different as well.

So, my first part of the interview was more concerned about the outer things -  but this part of my interview is more concerned about the inner part of Olan’s life.

Olan is also a cosmetics specialist and is called in for model shoots and that explains his relationship with M.A.R. Magazine- where his painting graces the current issue with a portrait of Anne Hathaway, whom Olan has met. 

In fact, you can see the relationship between the models of M.A.R. magazine and many of Olan’s paintings over the last year or two - it looks like his portraits, in some cases, grew out of his contacts with the models and his use of color and focus on the face grew out his work as a Cosmetics Specialist - which is a model’s best friend.

I would not have written this second post on the Olan interview tonight - were it not for needing to present, as much as I could, a fuller account - and while I did not take photos, which I could have, I focused again, on just talking and letting the conversation form itself - much as a painting takes form.

Another thing Olan did with me tonight is take the areas of my life and drew them out as themes as they related to me (ie: Art, time alone, 9/11, Job) - it reminded me of the way a web analyst would segment traffic coming to a website or page - but in this case, the website/page is me - and the categories are part of my life.

So among the things Olan can call himself - a psychic, a soul reader, a keen observer who looks into the eyes looking for the soul.

And that’s the end of my interview of Olan Montgomery - for now.

I find it much easier to write an interview of Olan without looking at my notes from tonight’s dinner meeting; I met Olan down at his Gallery and we had dinner next, and he game me one of his small paintings as well (the painting was based on the image below - of a young, homeless, gay woman the artist befriended).   I was attracted to the face of a larger painting of this model and he gave me a smaller version of it.

We spoke about his current show which will be coming down soon and it’s success.  I asked Olan to define the metrics for a successful show - that started a conversation where different arragements of sponserships and other commissioned works leads to a profitable show.  The money part of art was something Olan did not really want to focus on  - he wants to be free to do his art and not have to get involved with the politics of gallery dealers and collectors.  We talked about how difficult it is to do art and live in NYC and that society, as it is today, is focused on the wrong things - like getting ahead at the cost of hurting other people. 

Olan thinks deeply about this and tells me he did not care for what happened recently on The View and how Star was replaced.

We moved on to another subject, using the internet to go past dealers and reach fans directly - Olan was intrigured with the idea of The Long Tail and using the internet to sell his work - but did not really know how to go about it.

I mentioned Amy Crehore, and her devoted fan base plus the writeups in Boing Boing as an example of reaching fans and buyers without going through dealers (though she also does have dealers of her work).  Also the recent addition of Charles Saatchi’s Your Gallery website which Olan Montgomery used to create his own mini-site with his work.  Olan found out about the Saatchi online gallery through me, as did a friend of mine, Drew Knapp, who did the same thing (posted his work).

In fact, I used the Saatchi online gallery to discuss the first instance, to my knowledge, of a Major Gallery Dealer getting involved with Social Marketing, Viral Marketing - it’s as if Charles Saatchi gets it - he understands that many artists want a legitamate way to reach dealers like himself and Saatchi also wants to discover new artists - so he makes it possible to do so with the Your Gallery website - and become the most progressive art dealer.  Yes, I give Charles Saatchi credit for seeing something that needed to be done in social media and doing it (and he did a good job with Your Gallery).

Olan mentioned the Chelesa art galleries in the West 20’s where some artists are able to get sponsership but to just survive and do their work, is such a struggle (it always has been).   Olan mentioned that being an Art Dealer was a good business to be in - but being an artist is much harder.   I interjected and said it was always like that with a couple of artist superstars (ie: Picasso is a prime example) making a most of the money while most other artists can hardly make anything.  

In fact, with the Long Tail, created by the economies of the internet - many artists can thrive in ways that would have been much harder even 5 years ago (and that is not generally understood yet) - I think Amy Crehore is an example of that - an artist with a strong fan base - who really can do well with internet publicity - and you don’t need to be a Picasso (or the modern version of that - or even be part of the Whitney Biennial (see my review of the Whitney Biennial here) to utilize the power of internet to magnify your brand.

In fact, there’s much that I did not discuss with Olan tonight - I will have to cover in the next interview.  For example - Olan’s site uses AdSense and Affiliate Marketing, along with a series of articles and news - and it was only by looking at it in detail tonight - after speaking with him (where he mentioned he does write articles and post to his site and on other sites as well) that I went back and took a look at some of what he posted.  What I see is we need another interview do discuss how he approaches his website marketing of his own work and brand and what kind of volume of visitors his site generates.  These are questions for Webmetricsguru.com but they apply here as Olan clearly is using the power of Google Advertising and Affiliate Marketing to  make part of a living. 

Olan suggested we get together again, on a monthly basis to continue this conversation.  We also talked about having me interview his mother, who is also an artist and a very interesting person. 

Getting back to the interview I did tonight -I found out an interesting metric - it takes Olan about $700.00, or more to produce one painting using the techniques and media he employs (there’s often the cost of the paints, strecher, linen, photo transfer, etc) and that he sees all the work he does and what he makes off it as a way to continue painting - in other words, much of the money made on a show is re-invested back into this work - and I think that’s the right thing for an artist to do, personally.

The meeting ended with a walk back, next door, to Ward-Nasse Gallery where Olan showed me the work of other artists in the Gallery and introduced me to the Art Dealer who runs Ward-Nasse.   I also took the opportunity to look at some more of Olan’s paintings near the back of the Gallery that I had not really looked at as well as some of the other artists who have shows at Ward-Nasse.

By the Way, Olan did treat me to dinner which included Pasta and two glasses of red wine each.  Olan had his dog with him, and the dog was begging us for food - I ate all of mine so Olan put out part of his pasta plate - about a third of the dish and the dog finished it.

And that’s it for tonight’s interview with Olan Montgomery.