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The technology Jenison relies on can replicate art, but it does so synthetically, with no understanding of art's inner life

What a bunch of rhetorical diarrhea. This was nothing more than an exercise in curiosity, an exploration and evaluation of a hypothesis. This was not an attempt to disprove Vermeer's creativity, disprove artists in general, or disprove art.

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Indeed. For the historical investigation that forms the backbones of the story, they had to do an imitation of the original work.

The paint strokes on the canvas are literally the superficial aspects of the painting. There is much more 'art' in the choice of subject, perspective, layout and so on. But had Tim chosen his own subject matter freely, then comparison's with Vermeer's technique would have been almost impossible.

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