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juni 25, 2004
Mona Lisas leende
New Scientist Noisy secret of Mona Lisa's smile:
For centuries, artists, historians and tourists have been fascinated by Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile. Now it seems that the power of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece comes in part from an unlikely source: random noise in our visual systems.
...
As would be expected, noise that lifted the edges of her mouth made Mona Lisa seem happier, and those that flattened her lips made her seem sadder. More surprising though, was how readily the visual noise changed people's perception of the Mona Lisa's expression.
I artikeln finns även en serie bilder där leendet har blivit manipulerat för att visa andra uttryck än det hemlighetsfulla.
En något annorlunda presentation av ovanstående finns i Daily Times-artikeln Snow, the secret of Mona Lisa’s smile.
De lyckliga själar som har Science Direct-konto kan läsa papret från Vision Research, Volume 44, Issue 13. Det heter "What makes Mona Lisa smile?" [NB: Eftersom sådant konto saknas har papret inte lästs. Papret har nu erhållits. Stort tack!]
Abstract
To study the ability of humans to read subtle changes in facial expression, we applied reverse correlation technique to reveal visual features that mediate understanding of emotion expressed by the face. Surprising findings were that (1) the noise added to a test face image had profound effect on the facial expression and (2) in almost every instance the new expression was meaningful. To quantify the effect, we asked naïve observers to rank the face of Mona Lisa superimposed with noise, based on their perception of her emotional state along the sad/happy dimension. Typically, a hundred trials (with 10 or more samples for each rank category) were sufficient to reveal areas altering the facial expression, which is about two orders of magnitude less than in the other reverse correlation studies. Moreover, the perception of smiling in the eyes was solely attributable to a configurational effect projecting from the mouth region.
Posted by hakank at juni 25, 2004 07:58 FM Posted to Statistik/data-analys
Comments
"That may be part of what makes the painting so powerful," he says, something Leonardo must have instinctively realised."
Leonardo var på många sätt ett geni som var före sin tid. Men måste precis _allt_ han företog sig vara skicklighet? Målade han inte fler tavlor? Är de alla lika spännande? Det är inte möjligt att han faktiskt haft lite tur också? Jag är i vanligt ordning en smula skeptisk...
Posted by: Lars Olofsson at juni 25, 2004 01:20 EM