Prisma gallery – Scapes.

I hope this is the last installment and I find a new obsession soon. till then, enjoy some prisma-tic scapes.

other prsima blog post here .

Prisma gallery – portraits.

Love it or hate it, you simply can’t ignore it. Mobile apps come and go. Some last couple of seconds in your phone and some get installed to stay. Some make your life easier, some just entertain, some make you healthier and so on.

As an amateur visual artist, I got excited about Prisma like a boy with a new toy. Initially I thought that its an infatuation with this app that’ll eventually pass, like many others have previously. So I thought I will give it some time to cool down and see if I still like it.

Lo and behold, this AI powered algorithm still keeps me guessing.

The best part is that it can add spice to otherwise old and forgotten pictures.

Yes I clearly realize that they require hardly any effort on my part to create them, other than clicking pictures which I love to do. But, with due respect to all the real artists out there, whose skill can never be matched by digital wizardry, I would love to put some “prisma-rised” pictures from the past.

Prisma power, go get it.

Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!
~Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Out of nowhere comes a Russian fellow, 25 year old Alexey Moiseenkov, on 11th June of 2016, adds a drop called Prisma in the vast ocean of photo editing apps, and lo and behold, social network is flooded with self portraits in the style of Van Gogh, Picasso, Edvard Munch, Kandinsky, Lichtenstein, Raoul Dufy, Piet Mondrian, Mosaic, Francis Picabia, Camille Pissarro, Heisenberg, Hokusai and more. This little piece of digital wizardry takes the photo sharing scene by a viral splash of color and leaves you wondering where was all this art in the world hidden till now.

The most exciting thing about the app is that it has bought so much impending artwork lying in people’s cellphones, mainstream.

It has made historic art work styles and artists house hold names. Now folks can separate Picasso from Van Gogh and tell impressionist from a mosaic.

Here are some interesting facts :

• Prisma uses artificial intelligence to analyze each picture and turn it around. Unlike a lot of present day apps, it does more than just play with color values and add overlays.
• The algorithm was initiated in Germany and and a 9 memeber Russian company Prisma Inc. modified it to make it usable on a large scale.
• The artwork is made online, so it does suck up your data and battery.
• Its a stiff competition to Pokemon Go.
• More than 650 million pictures have been processed till date.
• The app in no. in 77 countries.
• Beware of similar rip off apps online. Prisma is by Prisma Inc. and a black triangle in a circle logo.

What makes me wonder is that how an app has turned fine art into assembly line mass produce-able entertainment for momentary consumption. Now anyone can envision a painting and if you can snap it, you can be the owner of a brand new artwork in the classic styles of the legends.

At the same time what distances it from real painters, like any mass produced product, is the lack of uniqueness that each painter carries. The expression that each real painter, apart from the 35 or so filters, creates on canvas. The real artists don;t have a filter in their head. They develop a visual language in which they express after long observation and practice. So, if you’re not already smothered with all the Prisma clogged color dabbed ‘artworks’ around you, you soon will.

In the meanwhile, some fun links :

• http://www.pcauthority.com.au/Feature/430517,7-ways-to-make-your-prisma-photos-look-like-true-works-of-art.aspx 
• For the uninitiated : http://www.androidcentral.com/prisma
  
• http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulmonckton/2016/07/26/a-sneak-peek-at-prismas-new-unreleased-features/#403e2c8b6289

Lastly, why not join the ‘have-Prisma-will-upload’ brigade. Here are some of mine.

Thanks for dropping by..!

would love to see some more art in the comments too..