Chasing the selfie dragon with that virtual Vermeer of perfection
COLUMNIST
FORGET Angry Bird, Candy Crush and Tinder – the most downloaded smartphone app of the moment is Google Arts & Culture. It offers articles on artists contemporary and classical, thematic exploration of art history by era, place and colours and virtual tours of the great museums and galleries of the world.
Who would have thought such an intellectual app would top charts traditionally dominated by the less cerebral demands of games like Fruit Ninja?
Surely this is cheering news for those who believe our brains are being turned to mush by our digital addiction to comedy cat videos.
But the reason Google Arts & Culture has gone viral has nothing to do with a sudden thirst for knowledge of Chagall’s use of blue, Frida Kahlo’s expression of identity through clothing or South Korea’s Chung Young Yang Embroidery Museum – though you can explore all those topics on the app should you feel so inclined.
The reason the internet has gone ape for the app is because it has a new feature which allows users to find their fine-art Doppelganger. So, basically, it’s matching modern selfies with historical portraits.
Google’s pairing algorithm trawls 70,000 paintings from museums and galleries across the globe to find the face that fits your selfie.
Various celebs have been tweeting their arty dead ringers while other notable figures have been matched by others – not always with flattering results. Uber-touchy Donald Trump isn’t going to be happy with the portrait of a plump girl eating ice-cream he’s been paired with, but Ed Miliband can’t complain about the rather hot Renaissance Venetian deemed his perfect match.
The popularity of the app is just one more example of our selfie obsession. It’s estimated 93 million selfies a day are being snapped across the planet. And shared, of course. For what is a digital portrait without our desperation to have our selfie-esteem boosted by likes, comments and heart-shaped emojis?
No location can be savoured without holding a smartphone at arm’s length and imposing our mug on the landscape. Sometimes without due regard for personal safety, as people gurn into their screens on vertiginous balconies, mountain tops or train platforms. In 2015 more people were killed taking selfies than in shark attacks. Indeed, there was probably someone somewhere who was taking a selfie while being attacked by a shark.
When not risking physical danger there are those who ignore the boundaries of taste and decency, posting selfies they have taken at places like Auschwitz or Anne Frank’s House. And you don’t have to be an idiot teenage tourist with zero grasp of gravitas to take inappropriate selfies.
Nelson Mandela’s memorial service wouldn’t seem the obvious place for middle-aged heads of state to behave like dumb millennials, but who could forget David Cameron, President Obama and the Danish Prime Minister grinning into the smartphone lens, with Michelle Obama ignoring them while sporting an expression of thunderous dis-