John William Waterhouse: Pandora, 1896 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
AO Scott is away sailing somewhere or something, so David Carr asked Melena Ryzik to join him on this video. It’s all about art.sy, a web site that brings to the world of art what Pandora brought to the world of music—an algorithm built by art historians who are indexing and categorizing art for the purpose of recommending art that you the reader might like. Art.sy has partnered with 275 galleries and 50 museums, digitizing about 20,000 images into what they are calling the “Art Genome Project. In Pandora, “focus traits” of music such as syncopation, tonality and harmonies are just one element of a system of categorization that can serve to show you the way to music you haven’t experienced but might like. Art.sy talks more about characteristics of art works in terms of the DNA of art, about the genome of art, the multitudes of traits that comprise the art “organism”. Art.sy employs 800 different genes of art to add deep analytics to the art world. So, as they say on this video, who needs a museum? But, as Melena points out, people who like art usually go to museums to see it rather than sitting around in their home, studying art on their laptop. I recommend this Sweet Spot video to open the door to this topic: http://nyti.ms/1swnVpg . Sweet Spot is relentlessly interesting and informative series of videos.