Pigeons trained to recognize bad art
Joshua Foer is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Joshua is a freelance science journalist and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Dylan Thuras.
In 1995, the Japanese psychologist Shigeru Watanabe made a splash when he proved that pigeons could be trained to differentiate between paintings by Monet and Picasso. Now he has taught them to recognize the difference between good and bad art. New Scientist reports:
He trained four birds - on loan from the Japanese Society for Racing Pigeons - to appreciate children's art by linking correct assessments of paintings with food. Works deemed good (see image) had earned As in art class, while bad paintings (see image) garnered Cs or Ds. Watanabe also put the paintings to a jury of 10 adults, and pigeons viewed only works unanimously declared good or bad by the panel.
After a series of training sessions consisting of 22 paintings on average, Watanabe presented the birds with 10 paintings they hadn't seen before: 5 bad, 5 good.
The birds had been trained to peck at a button for good paintings and do nothing in response to bad works. With never-seen works, pigeons picked good paintings twice as often as bad paintings, a statistically significant difference.
Watanabe's paper, "Pigeons can discriminate 'good' and 'bad' paintings by children," is published in the latest issue of Animal Cognition.
Now, if only pigeons could be taught to pilot missiles.
the latest
latest episodes
The pigeons were then shown a Mark Ryden painting, which they promptly pecked to shreds...
A racing pigeon has been landing in my garden for days. Maybe it's trying to say something about my painted rocks..
This must explain the "reviews" that pigeons keep leaving on statues.
Humans see A or B.
Pigeons agree (for a price).
More about pigeons or people?
Pigeons are excellent at moldy grain.
Can humans pick moldy grain 75% of the time?
Pigeons can recognize the difference between good and bad art? that is fairly impressive.
I wonder if art critics will ever be able to do the same.
I'll be impressed when the pigeon says 'it looks like bad Cy Twombly.'
I wonder if you can get the Pigeons to sit thru the new transformers movie...
Ah - during WWII there was a project run by B.F. Skinner (then a Prof at the University of Minnesota) to use pigeons to guide bombs onto their intended target.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon
http://www.arischindler.com/photos/1412/
Interestingly, this research suggested reward-based conditioning which he later pursued at Harvard.
Just so you know, your links go to the wrong images in the set, which left me initially confused. Once I sorted it out I was glad to see that the pigeons also liked the nice panda.
1. Train pigeons to tell good art from bad.
2. Train pigeons to shit on the bad art.
3. Release them out to the world.
4. ?
5. Fnord.
I thought the panda painting was flat, boring and trite, whereas the picture of dinosaurs had depth and expression and creativity. But maybe if you fed me enough grain I could be bribed into agreeing with the critics' banal point of view, too.
*peck* needs *peck* more *peck* happy *peck* trees
I think I prefer the pigeon missile-pilot idea. I wonder how many of the little bastards we could fit into a single rocket...
Wow! Pigeons can do anything!
http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html
I agree with Dagfooyoo. I think the dinosaur painting is awesome. I'd much rather gave it on my wall than the sad panda.
can the pigeons distinguish between human and robot art?
Bought a painting that was done by Neece Clark ( who is a georgia O Keefe wantabee) the painting was at a garage sale for $1.00 with pigeon shit on it I should trusted the signs "Pigeons know!" My boyfriend and friends that see this painting just laugh their ass off at me for being a sucker, gave it to my friends daughter so she can just paint over it. I'll trust the pigeons next time:{ Wish I would have read this before thanks for posting it