A collaboration between ING bank, Microsoft, Delft University of Technology, and the Mauritshuis museum brings us the Next Rembrandt project.

They’ve created an original, Rembrandt-style “painting” created by analyzing existing Rembrandt paintings (colors, head direction, facial composition, etc.).

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If this is a taste of what the robot apocalypse will look like, then I guess it seems sort of anticlimactic.

Anyway, if you were curious about how to make the MOST paradigmatic Rembrandt painting, you’d want the following characteristics:

Okay, but so much you probably already knew, without any deep data algorithms. Just with your fleshy meat brain.

But could you do this part?

They did micro-landscape analysis of the brushstrokes and mimicked that, too. Then used “paint-based UV ink” to create the final product with a 3D printer.

And how does it look?

I mean, it looks like a Rembrandt to me. (Some people claim they can tell it’s not authentic. I’m skeptical.) This – like computer-generated poetry – raises a bunch of interesting philosophical questions.

• Is it an artwork?
• Is it a painting?
• Is it an original painting?
• Is there an author? Who is it?
• Is there any creativity involved? Any expression?
• Would it actually be distinguishable, even by experts, from a real Rembrandt? And does that matter?

But most importantly:

• Will this creativity and computer learning lead to robots enslaving humanity?

“You could say that we use technology and data like Rembrandt used his paints and his brushes to create something new.” – Ron Augustus, Director of SMB Markets at Microsoft

I mean, like, you could… but should you?

If you’re curious, check out the video below to see an overview of the project. Much more at the project website.

(Via Core77. Thanks to Noah Greenstein for the pointer.)