This week, paul heads to florence to see how tech is revealing a 17th century artwork. This is the first frontal nude ever painted by a woman artist, so she was a groundbreaker. Zoe talks ai, apple, and podcast with the founder of spotify. Your session has begun. Lara is trying to fix herself. My back� s being scanned to start with. And spencer has a bit too much fun testing out a new ai visual effects tool. Who is this devilishly handsome machine . I hear you ask. Well, its me how do you like your street art . If the answer is big, beautiful and glowing, then youre in luck, because more than half of the Colors Festival In London is bathed in a sea of ultraviolet. This huge Exhibition Space Showcases works from more than 30 well known and emerging artists. And i have to say, the uv light and paints really make these pieces pop. Its as if they have an inner light all of their own. These artists are hoping to make a name for themselves today. But next we have a very modern story about an artist from history. Artemisia gentileschi was the most celebrated female artist of the 17th century. In 1615, she was commissioned to paint an historic portrait. It was a nude of a woman. But the thing is, it didnt stay nude for very long. A few decades later, it was altered to make it more modest and a few bits covered up, if you like. But now new technology has enabled restorers to digitally remove that censorship, so we can see what the painting was originally intended to look like. And paul carter has been to florence to see it for himself. Casa buonarroti displays the Art Collections of the buonarroti family, including the works of its most famous member, michelangelo. Its also home to allegory of inclination, painted by the pioneering 17th century female artist artemisia gentileschi. And theres more to her than meets the eye. She wasnt always covered by a veil. This is the first frontal nude ever painted by a woman artist, so she was a groundbreaker. However, michelangelo the younger� s nephew, who inherited the home, about 50 years later, felt that the painting was too naughty to be seen. And so he called in a famous baroque artist and he covered up the naughty bits with the drapery. Last year, the portrait came down from its position in the ceiling so that it could be restored. But this is no ordinary restoration project. Now, centuries after the painting was censored, technology can reveal how the artist always intended it to be seen. To remove these layers could pose a risk to the original that no one is willing to take. The challenge was to unveil the work, not physically removing the veils, but digitally. A range of photography and Scanning Techniques were used to read underneath the layers of paint. Images from the most significant scans were then collated in modus explorer, a tool created specifically for the project. We did 32 different reflectographs that went deeper and deeper into the structure of the painting. Since we were studying what lies beneath the veils, we were interested in seeing if any of the cracks actually follow the original paint of artemisia. And we found this crack here goes along the edge of her right arm. What were seeing in. 0utlined in white is what we can see through the reflectograph image. So, we could see the arms very well. It did penetrate through this lighter veil on the upper part of the body, but they couldnt read the very, very thick applications of oil paint, which the veils consist of. To go and see what is underneath the veils we had to use x ray. Everything is very cloudy looking, but you can definitely see the anatomy of her legs. Yeah. You can also see her belly button that, at the start of our project, was not visible. The team also used the Generative Fill Ai Tool in Photoshop Beta to help reconstruct textures and colours on some of the areas covered by veils. It was able to take the information from all of the diagnostics and apply paint where it needed to be applied and create the image. But you have to use it wisely. You wouldnt want it to get too creative. Revealing the original nude image wasnt the only aim of the restoration. Two tiny Micro Samples were taken from the painting so that the restorers could find out what pigments artemisia used and where exactly theyre located. This enabled the restorers to choose the right materials and methods to use in the restoration. The samples were analysed under a powerful microscope using a technique called ftir spectroscopy. This is one of the samples that the restorer had taken from the painting. Its less than half a millimetre. Its very, very tiny. The microscope reads the sample by Firing Radiation through it. Some is absorbed by the material, and the rest, which passes through or reflects back, is recorded. This produces whats known as a spectrum. Different molecules produce different spectra, which researchers can use to identify what the samples are made of. The technology has produced cutting edge instruments that are able to collect more than 1,000 spectra in a single shot, in one second, and with very high resolution. Here we can see the paint layers that compose the sample. What is very important is to try to take as small samples as we can because, you know, we have to preserve the work of art as much as possible. Im finally about to see a version of the image as artemisia painted it in the 17th century. This is not quite finalised yet because we still. You see, we still have some veil. Im really curious to know, what was your reaction when you first saw this image . Oh, i was very happy. People will be able to access this through a qr code that will be here at Casa Buonarroti and it will also be online. How do you feel artemisia would feel about this project . I think she would be very happy to know that people are interested in seeing what her original work looked like and that were doing our best to reveal that without damaging any of her precious paint. She would not have been happy with the censorship. I think she would feel a bit vindicated. Now, every so often a Company Comes along, which ends up representing a complete change in the way we do things. Apple came to represent the move to music downloads and smartphones. Youtube came to represent the move to video streaming. And for music streaming, of course, it was spotify. Zoe kleinman caught up with its founder, daniel ek, to find out how theyre planning to stay ahead of the game. You have so called deepfake ais where someones impersonating some famous artist, etc. And our view is, obviously, that is not positive and we believe that, er, say, something in the drake weeknd case, that drake and weeknd should be able to decide what kind of content they want to put out in the world, what they stand for. So, you have no immediate plans to ban ai generated content from the platform . No, we have no immediate plans. And, in fact, it wouldnt even surprise me that if we look at the top chart of spotify today, that theres a legitimate use of ai done by artists and we would allow for them. And then theres the one where its clearly someone trying to steal someones name or likeness or even infringe on someones ip. At which point we would say, that is not ok, that is not what we stand for, and we would take that down. Youve been very critical of apples practices, havent you, in the past and. And you still are. Yeah. A critical voice . 0ur beef is really round, um, allowing for a fair playing field. All were asking for is they can charge whatever fee they would like, so long as it was possible for us to not be in their store and download the app onto the iphone anyway. Apple would say that what youre paying for is the security that it provides and this enormous audience of iphone users that it has. Its giving you access to a marketplace that nobody else can. Can access and. And would argue that its worth it. What would you say to that . 4 billion consumers around the world and probably 80 of uk consumers, the primary way theyre accessing the internet is through their smartphones. And the primary way theyre accessing the internet is through apps on smartphones. And so this is the internet at this point. And thats why, from a principle standpoint, its really important for me, its an important Business Issue for spotify. But i believe it will be very important for the future innovation and for other developers. Spotify� s invested a lot in podcasting. You had some big names. You had the 0bamas. You had the duke and duchess of sussex. They released 12 podcasts in two and a half years. Was that worth £18 million . We thought new innovation was needed to happen here. We thought we can come in and offer a great experience that both makes consumers very happy and allows new creators new avenues. And the truth of the matter is, some of it has worked, some of it hasnt. Were learning from those and were moving on and we wish all of the ones we didnt renew with the best of success that they can have going forward. That was very diplomatic. Im Getting Better and better at it, so they would tell me. I mean, there are artists, arent there, who say they earn a fraction of a penny per stream of their tune on spotify . Is it. Is it difficult to make a living on your platform . Well, its difficult overall. I can safely say there are more artists than ever thats being successful on spotify than ever before in the history of music. However, im also empathetic because theres also more people trying to make it in music than ever before in history, too. And you need something extraordinary to break through and be heard. And were doing our part to expose more music to more people. Pieces from the asteroid were scooped up by 0mar assar� s cyrus spacecraft. Marsyas says these samples can provide information to the formation of the solar system. Your mac to see for the first time this material that there are the humour seen before, we thought about it for the past seven years and it is going to be very exciting but also, there was going to be a lot of work to do. Formerly this twitter, x has the biggest proposal of this information of six big Social Networks according to one European Commission study. It examined thousands of posts across facebook, instagram, tiktok, x and youtube with three countries being particularly at risk of this information. X has not yet commented on the study. Information. X has not yet commented on the study on the study. Lego has announced it is scrapping on the study. Lego has announced it is Scrapping Plans on the study. Lego has announced it is Scrapping Plans to on the study. Lego has announced it is Scrapping Plans to make on the study. Lego has announced it is Scrapping Plans to make bricks i is Scrapping Plans to make bricks from recycled bottles was that the toy giant said in 2001 it would aim toy giant said in 2001 it would aim to produce bricks that did not reduce crude oil but had found using the new material did not reduce Carbon Emissions and it is testing a range of alternative sustainable options. You know how it is youre filming a standard street scene, there are people milling about, its a lovely day. And then a robot wanders past your camera. Who is this devilishly handsome machine . I hear you ask. Well. It� s me and what i find really impressive is how easy this shot was to accomplish, because it pretty much is done im using something called Wonder Studio, which allows you to upload Video Footage to the cloud where it uses high end computing to identify different people in the shot and then replace them with 3d bodies. There were a selection of characters to choose from. So, naturally, ive used them all and, trust me, to be able to do this out on the street with a normal, wobbly tv camera is a real step forward. In the past, actors, and occasionally yours truly, have had to film their scenes in dedicated spaces, performing something called Motion Capture. Always in super tight lycra, never leaving much to the imagination. See, the only way a computer could work out what your various bits were doing was to track your various reflective balls and build a new body from the framework. We spent eight weeks shooting in Motion Capture on that film, so that was 2016. I was 19 years old at the time. It was like a dream job. Now, if you recognise tye sheridan, its probably because he starred in the Steven Spielberg film ready player 0ne, which involved a whole lot of Motion Capture and cgi. You know, youre wearing the suit and the head cam and youve got the dots all over your face and, you know, its a lot of fun. But unless you have hundreds of millions of dollars to go and shoot a film like that and afford the capture system, its really challenging to break into. It was around the time of shooting the film that tye got together with visual effects supervisor Nikola Todorovic to set up wonder dynamics, with a view to creating a system which would allow anyone to Motion Capture anything, anywhere. With Motion Capture, the set up is a big problem. You always have to constrain yourself and then if you want to shoot Something Else or move to a different location, you have to transfer all that, take your time to set up and do it. What we noticed, and, you know, tye and i worked together with some film makers that are very super artistically free. Theyll shoot something, theyll see a different location in a distance, theyre like, lets go there. And sometimes this Technology Stops us from that. In order to replace an actor with a Computer Generated character, this Software Needs to do two things that have traditionally needed specialist kits and specialist skills. First, you have to motion track the performer, thats what all the balls were about earlier, and second, you have to paint out the human and paint back in the background. And doing that on anything more than a very simple static shot gets really complicated really quickly. 0h Wonder Studio uses Machine Learning thats been trained specifically on the types of shots used in movies to find and track the people in the scene. And, i have to say, it really doesnt do a bad job of it. Even when the protagonist is pushing the limits of respectable human motion. Contrast this one Click Software to the relatively huge post production teams needed for a movie grade shot. You have to have, like, a quite large team of artists. You have to have a modeller, you have to have a rigger,. Which makes the skeleton of the cg character. You have to have a lighter, you have to have a texture artist. Then you must also have to have a composter, then you have to have a colourist to finish the shot and put it all together. Were talking about a simple shot of one cg character could be, on a small team, five or six people and on a large team for a big production, like a film, it could be 20, 30 people just for that shot. And yet, could some of this work now be automated . These days, ai can recognise human bodies in a piece of video, its almost trivial. This system, runwayml, takes Video Footage, works out what the different elements in the shot are, and then re themes the scene, meaning you can turn the whole shot into claymation or you can set up some books and turn them into skyscrapers. And this app, simulon, which is still in development, uses an iphones motion and depth sensors to provide more information about where the actor is and how the cameras moving. But just think about that for a sec. This will be done. On your phone the results from all of these systems arent perfect, but, for some, they may be good enough. This software allows people that lwere not involved in the Visuall Effects Industry to try things that they probably never thought they could try before, you know. It can really be used really easily on social media. You can create a lot of videos for tiktok and a lot for instagram, a lot for youtube. And theres a lot of really amazing creators out there creating some astonishing things on those platforms. So, i think these kind of tools will really help them. But i think for production itself, for visual effects production, i i think we are very far away from having something that works on a one click solution. Crowd la is a union town in early 2023, hollywood writers, followed by actors, went on strike, arguing that Artificial Intelligence poses a threat to creative professions, whether its Writing Scripts or animating fake background actors. But im wondering if ai might also be coming for the animators themselves. I think it was really important for us not to say that al is going to do everything. Thats why we built it the way we did. And thats why ai will not get you a perfect result. It will get you a base that you can then edit and manipulate. And thats something we worked really hard on. Were artists ourselves, so were very cautious of building this in a way that really speeds up and amplifies the artist. Nikola makes the point that Wonder Studio is meant to bejust part of a movie visual effects pipeline, which is why, as well as a finished shot, the Software Spits out all of the separate elements too, so that a visual effects team can tidy up, tweak, and change things after the scene has been shot. If, that is, you have a visual effects team. Me . I dont even have a creative director. And it shows. Youre doing it even hes doing it it was pretty cool, though. Thank you very much. Youve got to be careful pulling these kind of moves without warming up. I am not as nimble as id like to be, you know. But if you do do yourself a mischief, i might have just the thing. Like many people, ive had years of back and shoulder problems. I try to strengthen and stretch, but sometimes, you just want a good massage. So ive been testing backhug. This bed maps your back before its 26 robotic fingers start doing their thing. First of all, you need to sync it up to the app. In there, you receive an automated physio appointment, so you can explain any problems that youve got and what youre hoping to achieve. App your session has begun. My back� s being scanned to start with. Ok, its good on the middle and upper back and on the neck, but its not getting into my shoulders. Im just not feeling it enough on my shoulders. As well as choosing the strength you want before, you can choose how quickly you want it to reach that strength. So, you may want it to be gradual and it does feel particularly hard on the lower back. So, ive really had to turn that one down. The first time i used it, i was really impressed. But the more times ive used it, the less comfortable i found it on my lower back. But for anyone whos got an upper back, neck, or mid back problem, then i guess it can really get to it. Ive also been testing the Therabody Recoveryair boots pro. They aim to boost your circulation whilst also easing muscle soreness, swelling, stiffness and fatigue. The machine is charged so it doesnt need to be plugged in, which is easier for sitting somewhere with these on, as well. You dont have to worry about your power socket. As the boots inflate, which is how they create the compression, theyre also in sections, so you can do just part of your leg. You dont have to do everything at once. And you can also choose different pressure in different areas. Ive got the pressure set at 80 out of 100 so i can really feel the squeeze. But what happens when i go higher . Ok, im on 90 now. And at that level, you can feel the blood pumping through your veins. And then, when youre finished, gradually the air is let out and there is a kind of feeling of relief in my legs. But what does an elite athlete turned Science Writer make of them . I think they can be really relaxing, they feel good. But if you are someone who are using this product for recovery, youre probably pretty fit. You probably are not having problems with your circulation. But for a slightly different type of relaxation and recovery, ive been testing the higherdose sauna blanket. The idea is to increase your bodys Thermal Energy to help you relax and improve circulation. Its been about ten minutes now and i am starting to sweat. It tells you to start on level five to six and then if youre not sweating to turn it up to seven or eight, which i did need to do, but now im definitely hot enough. Although im going to get hotter and sweat more. So, clearly, it does thejob of making you sweat, but how helpful is the concept overall . Most of these things are just new ways to try and relax while you wait for your body to recover on its own. So, very few of these things really make a difference in terms of helping to speed recovery, but they give people a sense of agency. I dont know if briefly using these devices made any material difference to me or not, but i can see that a sense of feeling like youre trying to do something, especially when its enjoyable, had some benefit, especially when youre doing it on the job oh, it is such a tough life making a Lara Lewington film. Are you ok after that . Yeah, just about. 0k. Well, thats it from us from the Colors Festival In London. Thanks for watching and well see you soon. Bye. Hello. After the bright but chilly start to the day, the rain has moved in as weve gone through the afternoon, moved in across northern ireland, Northern England, much of wales, moving its way across scotland. You can see that Cloud Enveloping many areas, but in the south its stayed mainly dry and in the north of scotland. But the north of scotland will catch that rain as we go through this evening. We will keep those pulses running across parts of Northern England and wales, and actually, it stays mostly dry if a little misty and foggy in the south overnight. Further north, once the rain clears, just a few showers. But look at the temperatures. Its very mild overnight. 14 16 celsius in the south is what wed see during the day as we head into the start of october. And thats because weve got humid air moving into the south of that weather front. So it will be quite a muggy night as well and a murky morning, we could have some low level mist and fog, some fog over the hills as well underneath this band of rain. And well see further heavy pulses moving through. So for some parts of snowdonia and cumbria, we could see 30 110 millimetres of rain falling. Very different day for scotland and northern ireland. Itll be bright with a scattering of showers around here. Temperatures 17 19 celsius. As i say, it is humid air. And if we do see the Sunshine South of that weather front, 23 24 celsius then as we go through the evening and overnight into sunday, then we see that band of rain just creeping a little bit further south. But it never really gets really far south and clears the south east probably until tuesday. Behind it, certainly a fresher night, but again, warm and muggy across the southern half of the uk. Now the reason for that is because were going to see another pulse of rain moving along that same weather front. So holding it up, slowing it from clearing away. But this time, because weve got so much muggy, humid air in train, theres more energy in the atmosphere, and we could see some really lively thunderstorms during the course of sunday night into monday, working their way across parts of england and wales. Some real torrential downpours in places. To the north, another day of sunny spells and scattered showers. Fairly fresh feeling here, but still quite warm and muggy and even underneath the showers and thunderstorms further south. Now, that eventually clears out the way on tuesday. Well see a dip in temperature briefly with sunny spells and showers to the north. But then later in the week, temperatures build in the south. Bye bye. Live from london. This is bbc news. The us House Of Representatives narrowly passes a Stopgap Measure, averting Government Shutdown mere hours before funding was due to expire. Armenias government says more than 100,000 Ethnic Armenians have now fled Nagorno Karabakh since azerbaijan seized the region. The uk prime minister, rishi sunak, arrives in manchester for the annual conservative Party Conference amid a row within his party over taxes. A pro china candidate wins the second round of president ial elections in the maldives. Welcome to bbc news. Im lukwesa burak. The us House Of Representatives has passed a Stopgap Measure to avoid a government shudown thats just hours away. The short term funding plan excludes crucial aid to ukraine but increases federal money for natural disasters. If no funding deal is in place by the end of saturday, Government Agencies will start shutting down with hundreds of thousands of federal employees sent home without pay
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.