Amazing Science

Some of the most eye-catching and spontaneously interesting fashion models popular today have a secret — they may not be human at all. Advances in computer illustration and photography have made virtual high fashion models a super trend. Can you tell them apart from people?

Avant-garde stylists are exploring this creative intersection of life + art. These digital personalities are rising in the fashion world’s spotlight.

Virtual software from Clo co. makes modeling fabrics and textures fast and efficient, with life-like effects rendering images that are indistinguishable from actual surfaces like garments and skin.

Meanwhile, fashion industry think tank Looklet co. has breakthrough software that helps designers photograph and digital create modular sections of garments, then mix + match them virtually.

Further reading:

• Vogue | Numerous questions around the rise of CGI models and influencers
  deck: The virtual reality model debate.
• Vogue | How artificial intelligence will influence the future of fashion
  deck: In the post-material world.
• the Washington Post  | Soon the most beautiful people in the world may no longer be human
  deck: title
• Pen | Who is the mysterious Japanese artificial Instagrammer hanging out with French rapper Orelsan?
  deck: Perl is a model and virtual influencer.
• Cosmopolitan | Those crazy-realistic robot models taking over your Instagram feed — here’s why they look so human
  deck: An exclusive glimpse at how digital influencers get made.
• Harper’s Bazaar | People can’t tell if this Fenty model is real or fake
  deck: Shudu is the science fiction creation of photographer Cameron-James Wilson
• Time | list: the 25 most influential people on the internet
  deck: no. 22 — Miquela
• WWD | Shudu: fashion’s first avatar super-model
  deck: She can’t talk or predict your favorite new product, but don’t under-estimate her power.
• the Cut  | Body con job
  deck: Miquela Sousa has over 1 million followers, but she isn’t real.
• Wired | The rise of computer generated celebrities
  deck: A new generation is selling out concerts, starring in commercials, and amassing huge followings.

With the aid of a particle accelerator, scientists are bringing back ghosts from the past, revealing portraits hidden underneath the tarnished surface of two roughly 150-year-old silver photographic plates.

Researchers used an accelerator called a synchrotron to produce strong, but nondamaging beams of X-rays to scan the damaged photographs, called daguerreotypes, and map their chemical composition. This allowed chemist Madalena Kozachuk of Western University in London, Canada, and colleagues to trace mercury deposits in the plates and create digital copies of the hidden images, the team reports June 22 in Scientific Reports. One image revealed a woman; the other, a man who had been completely obscured by tarnish. 

An early form of photography, daguerreotypes were popular from the 1840s through the 1860s. Photographers crafted the images by making a silver-coated copper plate and treating it with iodine vapor to generate a light-sensitive surface. Subjects sat still for the several minutes required to expose the plate and create an image. Then photographers treated the plate with heated mercury vapor and a gold solution to develop the image, forming tiny silver-mercury-gold particles where light struck the plate during the exposure process. These particles make up the image, reflecting white light. Lighter parts of an image, such as the woman’s hands and collar, have a higher density of these particles.

The researchers used mercury to map the contours of the original images, because that metal remains fixed in place under years of cloudy tarnish. The scans revealed where the original particles were, letting researchers reconstruct the image.

Scanning the roughly 8-by-7-centimeter daguerreotypes, provided by the National Gallery of Canada, was time-consuming, taking about eight hours per square centimeter.