Computer science and the image

Many people think that science and art are opposites. Leonardo da Vinci would never have agreed. He was both scientist and artist, using his science to guide his art and his art as inspiration for his science. 'Art meets science' didn’t just stop with Leonardo though. Science is a very creative endeavour of course, and this is especially so for computer science. Now, in the age of multimedia, computer science is there in the middle of it all. It gives artists new media to work in, and even new artists to do the art.

CGI (Computer Generated Images) are now a central part of filmmaking, and computer scientists are still pushing the boundaries of what can be done. The vast quantities of multimedia on the web and in personal collections on our laptops and mobiles are giving computer scientists new challenges in finding ways to ensure we don’t sink in all the material. How do you find photos or specific scenes in a film? Artists, images and image-based algorithms can even help the scientific process. It's an exciting time to be a creative computer scientist.