Posted by Annia Domènech 8 years, 9 months ago

Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci

The Gioconda or Mona Lisa is a well-known portrait whose permanent residence is the Louvre Museum, in Paris.  Highly expressive, one can easily imagine its beautiful features moving in the presence of a person. To interact with the beautiful lady of the so-called enigmatic smile belonged longtime to the dream world. Thanks to the artificial intelligence, it is no longer the case.

Florent Aziosmanoff is an artist and independent producer with a professional background in artificial intelligence. He is not only interested in building objects that act as if they were alive in the presence of somebody or something, but also to see the subsequent behavioral changes in people. They necessarily want to generate a reaction and they try to find what works best, as an adult making different faces at a baby to make him laugh. It is what Aziosmanoff calls “Living art”.

The name of the art piece “Living Mona Lisa” can be understood at the same time as a Mona Lisa who is alive and a Mona Lisa who is “lived”. Both meanings fit perfectly because this contemporary art piece lives and is lived thanks to artificial intelligence. 

Mona Lisa in 3D, Credits: Living Mona Lisa

 

The Institut de l’Internet et du Multimédia (IIM) is in charge of the technical part of the project, under the direction of Jean-Claude Heudin. The design school Strate participates in the design part (obviously). It took one year to create the 3D image of Mona Lisa animated in real time. For this, it has an emotional engine based on a neuron network that uses deep learning. A detector “shows” Madame Lisa the attitude of her interlocutor and her emotional engine reacts changing her appearance. She can look in different directions, she can tilt her head, she can smile, she can blink, she can breathe… Her artificial personality is inspired in her looks and in Leonardo da Vinci`s philosophy of life and art.

If you wish to see Living Mona Lisa in the same size of her alter ego, visit the Château du Clos Lucé, in Amboise (France) before the 15^th November 2016.

The creative team want to follow animating Mona Lisa: arms, hands, landscape… You can help this project to succeed through crowdfunding at Ulule. 

The real goal is no to produce an exclusive piece of art but to create Living Mona Lisas in different sizes and qualities so many people can interact with this character on a daily basis. The moment will come when Lisa will even be capable of leaving the frame, and maybe never come back.

More information
Living Mona Lisa, Ulule page (in French)
Living Mona Lisa
Living Joconde (in French, prototype site)
Living Joconde, AFP (in French, video)
Living Joconde (Futur en Seine, video)