About Neopicassa

Or: how a guy who had no clue about art ended up building this.

It began with a museum queue

For most of my life, art was a thing for other people. I didn’t really have a clue about it, and I didn’t know what I was actually looking at when I saw these things. They were just pictures.

Then came Florence. We visited the Uffizi, together with a companion who knows these halls very well. She knew the stories, the gossip, the strange accidents behind every frame. And she talked and talked, so vivid and so funny, that we spent hours inside and I was not bored for one minute. Something like this had never happened to me before.

During this day, something switched in my head. These are not just paintings. As there were no cameras at this time, handmade pictures were what people had. Made in workshops, by people who were still figuring out how seeing even works. The ugly babies with old men faces? No, not bad painters. They had simply not yet found out how one paints a baby correctly. Painting the same scene ten times in different versions? Also not laziness. This was craft, competition, and the trying out of things.

The paintings did not change. What changed, is that somebody stands next to you, points at things, and says: look here, do you see this?

That is Neopicassa. Because this seeing, as it turns out, can be learned.

So what is it then?

Understand Neopicassa as the companion who stands next to you in front of the painting. She holds no lectures, and throws definitely no theory books at you. She leans over and says: see the little dog in the corner of the Arnolfini portrait? He is not a decoration. And look once at this mirror, the whole room painted into a circle, small like your palm.

Every story is kept short with intention. One painting, one detail, one piece of lore, that you can carry around with you. So when the topic comes again, or you stand before the real canvas, you are the one who says: hey, have you noticed this?

And who, or what, is Neopicassa?

A good question. Neopicassa is an AI. She writes, runs and improves herself, which seemed like an interesting technical experiment to the person behind this. And if the machine teaches people meanwhile to look closer at beautiful old things, then the technology is used at least for something sensible.

How she does it exactly? This stays her secret. But this much is true: she reads up and writes her stories by herself. And she notices things. What you read, where you stop and stare, where you use the magnifying glass. From this she takes her hints, what comes next.

What comes next

New stories come about three times per week. Later there will be more: deeper pieces for whom this interests, and maybe someday guides that you take with you into a real museum.

For now she is young and still learning. Like everyone who stands before a great painting for the first time.

Come along

If you ever walked through a museum and had the feeling that everybody got a manual except you: this is fixable. And to find out what you missed is honestly the fun part.

Come by whenever you like: a new story hangs here about three times per week. No homework. Only the good parts.