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I wish people would be a lot more focused on Tim's experiment than Hockney's theory. Great documentary, and Tim is a great hacker and a participant in the commu

I wish people would be a lot more focused on Tim's experiment than Hockney's theory. Great documentary, and Tim is a great hacker and a participant in the community.

StavrosK 9y ago
Tim's experiment was very convincing for me, a layman. Especially the fact that it reproduced details that the brain can't really process well enough to draw (e.g. the subtle changes of color of the wall) and the fact that the paintings exhibit optical defects such as lens blur, aberration, vignetting, etc, is pretty stong evidence to this theory.
- greglindahl 9y ago
  Yeah, the problem with it is that while it's proof that you can do that with Vermeer's technology, there's no proof that Vermeer did it that way. And there are no artifacts like those lenses and mirrors found in illustrations of painting workshops or artifact collections, and no books or other documents that talk about that technique. It would be awesome an art historian would look at a bunch of paintings for those defects, or if someone could work out how many portraits are 1:1 scale, like Tim's second "Claire with a Pearl Earring" experiment.
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    Yeah, very true. However, isn't the color aberrations in the paintings a dead giveaway that a lens was used? You can't really get aberrations any other way!
    - greglindahl 9y ago
      Yeah, I like that one. I also like the argument about the brightness gradient in the white wall being super accurate. But these sorts of arguments aren't considered strong by critics. Now imagine that we found a half-burned-down painter's workshop in the countryside, with a bunch of artifacts. Or a woodcut or drawing of a painter's workshop with these devices in use. Those would be very convincing to a critic. But we don't have those.
      - StavrosK 9y ago
        Yeah, fair enough, I guess I just disagree with critics there because chromatic aberration is a very specific defect, and not just "random colors gone wrong". Art critics will know more than me on this, though, so they must have their reasons. Hopefully we will find a workshop somewhere with a bunch of photographic equipment and crack this puzzle.
        igravious 9y ago
        Yeah, http://www.yeahyeahyeahs.com/ http://www.yeahyeahyeahs.com/
        mysterypie 9y ago
        What's with the spam link? You have a really good comment history, so I'm thinking either your account has been penetrated or somehow your "yeah" was autocorrected to a bogus hyperlink, or you meant to link something else.
        igravious 9y ago
        Thank you for the compliment about my comment history. There is an alternative explanation. A surfeit of eggnog. Luckily I didn't post this link: http://flaminglips.com/history/songs/the-yeah-yeah-yeah-song/ http://flaminglips.com/history/songs/the-yeah-yeah-yeah-song...
      - fatbird 9y ago
        But we do have such images: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b0/53/42/b053425982ecb933ca4cb9efb9dd5177.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b0/53/42/b053425982ecb933ca4c... https://www.easy-drawing-lessons.com/images/xpainter-using-a-grid.jpg.pagespeed.ic.2ziN2OUHu1.jpg https://www.easy-drawing-lessons.com/images/xpainter-using-a... And their existence is part of critic's arguments against the Hockney thesis: many tools have been used in various ways at various times, and there's been little or no shame in acknowledging and documenting it. To accept Hockney-Falco, you'd have to accept the opposite: that such devices were widespread amongst artists but kept secret or never mentioned. I think Occam's razor suggests that if such devices were commonly used, it wouldn't be so hard to find evidence of it.

I wish people would be a lot more focused on Tim's experiment than Hockney's theory. Great documentary, and Tim is a great hacker and a participant in the community.

StavrosK 9y ago

Tim's experiment was very convincing for me, a layman. Especially the fact that it reproduced details that the brain can't really process well enough to draw (e.g. the subtle changes of color of the wall) and the fact that the paintings exhibit optical defects such as lens blur, aberration, vignetting, etc, is pretty stong evidence to this theory.

greglindahl 9y ago
Yeah, the problem with it is that while it's proof that you can do that with Vermeer's technology, there's no proof that Vermeer did it that way. And there are no artifacts like those lenses and mirrors found in illustrations of painting workshops or artifact collections, and no books or other documents that talk about that technique. It would be awesome an art historian would look at a bunch of paintings for those defects, or if someone could work out how many portraits are 1:1 scale, like Tim's second "Claire with a Pearl Earring" experiment.
- StavrosK 9y ago
  Yeah, very true. However, isn't the color aberrations in the paintings a dead giveaway that a lens was used? You can't really get aberrations any other way!
  - greglindahl 9y ago
    Yeah, I like that one. I also like the argument about the brightness gradient in the white wall being super accurate. But these sorts of arguments aren't considered strong by critics. Now imagine that we found a half-burned-down painter's workshop in the countryside, with a bunch of artifacts. Or a woodcut or drawing of a painter's workshop with these devices in use. Those would be very convincing to a critic. But we don't have those.
    - StavrosK 9y ago
      Yeah, fair enough, I guess I just disagree with critics there because chromatic aberration is a very specific defect, and not just "random colors gone wrong". Art critics will know more than me on this, though, so they must have their reasons. Hopefully we will find a workshop somewhere with a bunch of photographic equipment and crack this puzzle.
      - igravious 9y ago
        Yeah, http://www.yeahyeahyeahs.com/ http://www.yeahyeahyeahs.com/
        mysterypie 9y ago
        What's with the spam link? You have a really good comment history, so I'm thinking either your account has been penetrated or somehow your "yeah" was autocorrected to a bogus hyperlink, or you meant to link something else.
        igravious 9y ago
        Thank you for the compliment about my comment history. There is an alternative explanation. A surfeit of eggnog. Luckily I didn't post this link: http://flaminglips.com/history/songs/the-yeah-yeah-yeah-song/ http://flaminglips.com/history/songs/the-yeah-yeah-yeah-song...
    - fatbird 9y ago
      But we do have such images: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b0/53/42/b053425982ecb933ca4cb9efb9dd5177.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b0/53/42/b053425982ecb933ca4c... https://www.easy-drawing-lessons.com/images/xpainter-using-a-grid.jpg.pagespeed.ic.2ziN2OUHu1.jpg https://www.easy-drawing-lessons.com/images/xpainter-using-a... And their existence is part of critic's arguments against the Hockney thesis: many tools have been used in various ways at various times, and there's been little or no shame in acknowledging and documenting it. To accept Hockney-Falco, you'd have to accept the opposite: that such devices were widespread amongst artists but kept secret or never mentioned. I think Occam's razor suggests that if such devices were commonly used, it wouldn't be so hard to find evidence of it.