Revolutionary Van Gogh AI Experience at Musée D’Orsay

Dive into Van Gogh's world with Musée D’Orsay's 'Hello Vincent'—a unique, AI-driven dialogue with the artist himself.

The time has come! They finally resurrected an artist you can talk to! And they chose Vincent van Gogh... Yes, the guy that was so depressed he cut his own ear off! Chatting with him must be a blast...!

Vicent, the resurrected icon

The “Hello Vincent” experience is a generative Artificial Intelligence project developed by Musée D’Orsay's most famous "living" artist...

The painter seems to be getting more relevant each year with the recent animated movie Living Vincent (2017), the popular "immersive exhibitions" touring all over the world showcasing his paintings on projected walls and the countless "The Starry Night" socks that must be getting shipped from China as I'm writing this...

It all becomes ironic when we take into account that part of his legend and fame as an icon today is due to the irrelevance he endured during his lifetime... If the artificial intelligence did a good job the resentment in Vincent's voice should be palpable:

"Another naive art student trying to emulate me... You wouldn't want to be resurrected to talk about your miserable life more than a century after your death...! For god's sake, I facilitated my own end...! How could I possibly care to answer your questions on Post-Impressionism? I shouldn't even know what that silly word means!" - My imagined Van Gogh

How Does It Work?

The application enables visitors to chat one-on-one with the artist while he’s painting his famous Wheatfield with Crows. The artificial Van Gogh was created using 900 letters written by the painter himself as reference, in an effort to capture his personality and knowledge... Hopefully it doesn't get him totally right, so that it doesn't leave the museum immediately to drink and fight at the nearest tavern...!

The program was developed by the startup Jumbo Mana in collaboration with Dr. Wouter van der Veen (an art historian specializing in Van Gogh's life and work). Also, the University of Paris-Saclay granted the team access to the Jean-Zay supercomputer.

I'm sure this last "collaborator" helped immensely since the machine has a computing speed of 28 petaflops (yes, the word sounds absolutely fake!), which is equivalent to 28 million of billion operations per second... What I don't understand is the name? Jean Zay was a French politician and freemason... I doubt he could do as many operations as the supercomputer named after him...!

Well, you know what to do next time you go to Paris! Because, there not much else to do in that city, right...?

Oh, I almost forgot: In Musée D’Orsay, you can also look at the actual paintings Vincent van Gogh painted by himself, without the help of a supercomputer named after a politician...! But who wouldn't miss the charming 3D modeled Vincent explaining it all to you at the same time?

In Domestika we can help you resuscitate the dead using AI... We just hope you choose a less problematic individual next time:

- Join our courses on Artificial Intelligence
- 12 Influential Artists in Artificial Intelligence
- Vincent van Gogh Loved Japanese Art An Article by Ingrid Constant