Monet and machine vision

Published: Nov. 20, 2023, 9:55 a.m.

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The Impressionist painter Claude Monet wrote that he was driven \\u2018wild with the need to put down what I experience\\u2019. In his long career he revolutionised painting and made some of the most iconic images of western art. The art critic Jackie Wullschl\\xe4ger\\u2019s biography of Monet looks at the man behind the famous artist.

Monet\\u2019s late series of paintings of water lilies became less and less concerned with a conventional depiction of nature. The artist Mat Collishaw\\u2019s latest works also draw on evocative imagery from the natural world, including use of AI technology. At an exhibition at Kew Gardens (until April 2024) Collishaw takes inspiration from 17th century still life paintings of flowers, but on closer inspection the viewer sees the flowers morph into layers of insects.

Humans have always used technology to expand our limited vision, from the stone mirror 8,000 years ago to facial recognition and surveillance software today. Jill Walker Rettberg is Professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen. In her book, Machine Vision, she looks at the implications of the latest technologies, and how they are changing the way we see the world.

Producer: Katy Hickman

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