You say that with some authority. I have my doubts...

It's part of the premise, you have to assume it. The function of the machine is to copy. Copying does not require emotion. The purpose of a forgery is to *be* a copy; see above. There is no such thing as a 'technically perfect' forgery that lacks emotion, because its entire physical (and therefore only) existence is 'technical'.

Now, if we were talking about *creating* 'undiscovered' Monet forgeries, that would be totally different. We're not.

While the drone mentioned above *may* be able to duplicate a given painting, it would probably need quite some trials and errors (like a human copyist) to get the right motions to replicate the effect.

Also I don't think it would be able to handle a very important part for a high-end forgery : the knowledge of the right support, tools, pigments and other materials (or what to use to replace them convincingly) to fool experts. But for a "run-off-the-mill" forgery - say the kind you put in place of the original you just stole to delay the discovery of a theft.

[EDIT] Missing the end of the sentence : But for a "run-off-the-mill" forgery - say the kind you put in place of the original you just stole to delay the discovery of a theft it's certainly adequate. [/EDIT]

I guess that depends on the Autosoft and the dice rolls. I'm not saying the machine is a master forger (which implies all those material aspects you mention). I'm just saying there's no such thing as 'emotion' in the painting. If the materials are right, and the copy is 'technically perfect', there is nothing left to say.

Except it'll take less than a minute of examination to declare it to be a forgery.

Just as an off-hand dicepool for (and very much in favor of) the forger 5(+2) + 4 + 5 + 4 (Int, Log, or Agi) + 2 (good tools)= 22 dice

Assume the improbable happens and the person rolls 20 successes and creates a world-class forgery.

He tries to sell it to an art gallery or collector who insists on having it checked. The picture is sent off to be checked and ends up in the hands of an inspector who is a real dingus.

3 (Log) + 6 (Forgery 4, Detection specialization), + 5 (Various inspection instruments) = 14 dice

The guy may not be able to pick his nose and walk at the same time, but he WILL build up enough hits on an Extended Test to hit 20 and find it to be a forgery.

So unless you can convince the gallery owner or collector to NOT have it inspected, you've just engaged in a massive waste of time.

This is why I'm a fan of degrading dicepool whenever a extended check is being made that should have a real chance of failing.



-k

14 DP isn't small, though. The guy *is* an expert, professional forgery detector, with specialization. Tools +5? Man.

Anyway, where are you looking? SR4A says 'Perception + Intuition test' (no mention of Extended, instead 'Opposed'), and vaguely mentions GM-optional gear bonuses.

You seem to assume that the expert makes an extended test and the forger does not. It doesn't seem right to me. The forger will probably spend hours on his work, why wouldn't he also make an extended test ?
Edit : nice, we all post at the same time

While inventorying an office-supply store this evening, I thought of a use for Forgery: ID badges. The very fact that purely electronic ID is so easy to spoof, and physical badges are so cheap to make, ensures their continuing use. They may have an RFID chip inside, but outwardly they'd look basically the same as they do today: a rectangular plastic blivet with the person's name, title, and photograph on it. If you don't have a badge, the guards don't let you in. Simple as that. So you either steal one, or forge one.

You mean like:

Exactly

Once used forgery to aid in impersonating Damien Knight. An aide stepped in with a few documents to sign...

I am with TJ here. Even if you could fully analyze a painting in order of strokes and then length and strength in each stroke and then get a drone with mechanical hand to do it, the result would be "cold", i.e. lacking in emotion, and therefore obviously a fake even to the untrained eye ... at least that's how it would be in my game.

Decided there is wa-ay too much knowledge and skill required to forge a painting enough to fool experts a la long con for a runner, but Art Forger might be an interesting contact for a con man to have ...

This is what I mean about the Forgery skill. Not just Credsticks and SINs, more ID badges and warehouse procurement orders ... although you do need some computing skills to add biometric data for the ID and orders on the system to procurement document to make them appear more legit.

Nope, that's crap, Midas. If you're duplicating the painting, you're by-definition duplicating any 'emotion' in it; that 'emotion' is physically present, because it's a dead pile of paint. If you're saying the painting could be poorly copied, yes. But it could be poorly copied in *any* way, including too much 'emotion', or any other errors.

Why is that crap, Yerameyahu? Just because it disagrees with your stance?

I have yet to see a machine capable of creative thought and purpose in the process of painting. With a copy, "Something" will be missing, even if it is technically correct.

I don't have a stance. A painting is a physical artifact. Copying it means producing a duplicate. No creativity is involved. In fact, 'creatively' copying something means 'failure to copy'; a remix, at best. You two are talking about magic, or possibly religion.

I think that you do, since you keep bringing it up... and, Ummmmm.... No, I'm Not...

Then what are you talking about? An ineffable "something" that doesn't physically exist, is what you've said.

Humnanity has a Spark that a Machine just cannot reproduce. It DOES exist, and machines cannot adequately reproduce it. Nothing "Magical" about that at all.

Yes, there is. You're talking about fantasy. But, as I've explained several times, it's totally irrelevant.

We're not talking about machines creating art, or anything else. No one said a machine could be Monet. We're talking about duplicating a physical artifact. There is no 'spark' in duplication.

And I say that that SPARK is lost when a Machine attempts to Duplicate it. Stalemate...

More magical thinking. There is nothing in the painting that is not physical; this is given. The machine can (we're assuming) duplicate physical things. An illiterate man can duplicate a page of Shakespeare.

As I said, Stalemate. We will not convince each other...

There's no convincing. One is a fact, the other is a faith.

As an artist and a painter, that "magical spark" exists only in the moment of creation. After that it's just a pile of paint on a canvas.

I can see a machine that could duplicate a painting right down to the brushstrokes being created by the 2050s to 2070s.

Hell, you could probably even use a nano-fabber to make the copy. Then every molecule would be reproduced.


-k

Prove your Fact then... Unfortunately, you cannot really prove it.
No Worries though, I can still have my Faith.

And yet they still would not be perfect copies...

This argument really reads like a Atheist telling a Fundamentalist that God doesn't exist.

If every molecule is identical, they would be, by definition, perfect physical copies.

Here's what you're stretching for:

There is, in Shadowrun, one game mechanic that would show the difference between an original painting and a machine-duplicated one. The Astral Plane. On the Astral, the original would be vibrant and alive. The machine duplicate would be grey and dead.

To a mundane, though, he would be completely unable to tell the difference.



-k

So Which is Which?

Sure, Karma, but he's not talking about auras. He's talking about real-world 'magic'.

Seerow, it's a fundamentalist asking an atheist to *prove* that God doesn't exist.

The least he could do is not be ashamed of his magical thinking, and admit it. He already said that an exact, molecular duplicate 'wouldn't be the same'. Lord.

There are also mundane tests that could be performed to show the difference in aging between the original and the copy (hell, we can do those today). A Copy is NEVER perfect, that is NOT a stretch, it is simple fact...

But yes, Astral is the easiest and quickest way to determine the difference in game; something that I was not even considering, originally.

Come on, now. Did you just say that the human 'spark' of 'creativity' is buried in the aging differences? Or, more likely, did you bring up a totally unrelated point? We're talking about the art, the colors, and mostly—I presume—the brushstokes.

Well that's how those arguments usually go.

Atheist: God doesn't exist
Fundy: Prove it
Atheist: You can't prove something isn't there
Fundy: Then we just have to agree to disagree
Atheist:

My point is that a Machine can likely copy a work of art, but it will never be perfect, because it cannot be. And since it is not a perfect copy, it can be detected as such (through several methods, both mundane and magical in the Shadowrun World). Maybe I am talking in circles..... Been a long day.

It would not be because it would not be exact. Nothing magical about that.

Which is why you can't give in to it. It only encourages them.

I'm all about the fact that you can't age something exactly the same without a time machine; that's cool, and trying to cheat that fact produced a fun episode of White Collar. I'm all for the idea that masterpieces in the Sixth World have auras and are astrally verified; awesome. But the presence of an indescribable 'spark', 'something', 'creativity' in a dead pattern of pigments and oil? At least the aura made sense.

! Cheater! Your new point is totally different from your previous one. You didn't say that forgeries would contain technical errors. On the contrary, you said they'd lack 'emotion', even if they were 'technically perfect'.And now you're saying they couldn't be technically perfect in the first place. Surely you can see the logic and coherency mess.

They DO Lack Emotion. And they are still not perfect copies, as you claim they are...
I always said that they were not technically perfect. They are not perfect copies, therefore they are technically imperfect. That is what "Not Perfect" means.

My Mind is fogging.... Time to call it a night. Thanks for the discourse.

I seriously had a moment there. I remembered why the few times I had work displayed in local art galleries, I hated every minute I was present.

I'd keep hearing hoity-toity conversations about "essential essences" and "living presence" and the like.

It's crap. All of it.

I create imagery. Sometimes seeing the imagery triggers certain neurons in the brain of the viewer and induces emotional responses. Sometimes the subject matter invokes interesting thoughts. Sometimes people go, "Meh", and move on.

But there's nothing magical about the materials involved. The paint has no emotion. Many of the emotive responses can be at least partially replicated by handing someone chocolate. Or a puppy. If I make a painting in a computer with Photoshop, and have it printed on a large canvas, would that canvas have emotion? No. But I'd still get the damn "essential essences" conversations from people cooing over it.


As for aging - if they can assemble complex machinery atom by atom in a nano-fabrication forge, they could damn well replicate the aging process as well. Painting aging is nothing but molecules changing, something that nano-fab could replicate.

Yes, you could make a duplicate "old".

True, a robot merely wielding a paintbrush couldn't do that, but neither could a human being wielding a paintbrush.



-k

I just quoted you saying they were technically perfect. Your mind fogged long ago, TJ.

For the video version of my rant, see here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I07xDdFMdgw




-k

Can't argue that one...

I am not sure an illiterate man could copy a page of Shakespeare faithfully (someone who is illiterate can only see letters in words as symbols, and as with kids learning to write would probably end up with some mistakes such as 'e's the wrong way around). I would agree with you that a basically literate person or a computer software programme could recognize the words on the page and copy them faithfully, but that is not really the point because we are talking about art rather than literature. An artist develops his technique and perspective over a lifetime, and so a painting is not so easy to copy as words.

If paintings were no more than a bunch of dried paint on canvas, there would be no such thing as art and no such people as artists, and following your position to its logical conclusion no one canvas of dried paint would be worth more than another. Why do you think it is that original paintings by masters such as Monet of van Gogh sell for millions? And why is it that indistinguishable-to-the-naked-eye forgeries are only worth hundreds of dollars?

Going back to your Shakespeare analogy, computer-generated voices might be able to make a technically correct reading of a Shakespeare play, but I don't think they would have the critics raving ...

Do you not think Shakespeare (and every other famous writer) developed HIS technique and perspective over a lifetime?

If his writings were no more than a bunch of words taken randomly out of a dictionary, there would be no such thing as literature and no such people as writers, and following your position to its logical conclusion no one written work would be worth more than another. Why do you think it is that original manuscripts by masters such as Shakespeare sell for millions? And why is it that indistinguishable-to-the-naked-eye forgeries are only worth bupkis?

You need to separate the act of creative work from the copying of the creative work.

Given that we stipulated the copy is 'technically correct', you can see that your 'illiterates make mistakes' point is out of order.

This makes no sense. Artists can still produce artifacts, and no one said that all dried-paint artifacts are equal. Again, we're *assuming* that the technique (brushstrokes, etc.) is adequately duplicated by the forger; otherwise, it would not be 'technically correct'—the brushstrokes would be wrong.

Remember, your position is not that there are any physical differences. Your position is that there are *metaphysical* differences. We can make it easier: consider the copying of a digital work of art. Forgery is actually meaningless here, because everyone knows it's trivial to produce perfect copies. Forgery exists because it's *hard* to make 'technically perfect' copies of artifacts, *not* because artifacts have souls.

I was trying to work with Yerameyahu's analogy of words (a known quantity that most people [although NOT illiterates] can easily reproduce) on a page vs brushstrokes (using techniques and perspective developed over a lifetime) on a painting. But you're 100% right, forging a painting convincingly would be more akin to reading the Completed Works of Shakespeare and then trying to write like him than copying words on a page.

The "illiterates make mistakes" point was more a pedantic riposte to your falacious statement that illiterates can indeed read and write with technical perfection than anything else.

I never argued that a copy would be technically perfect. Like I said, painters develop their techniques and perspectives and styles over a lifetime. So, while knowledge that say, van Gogh would take liberal doses of paint on a brush and "stab" the canvas building up a kind of mosaic of paint upon paint and colour upon colour would allow someone to approximate the technique, I do not think they would be able to reproduce his technique exactly without spending several lifetimes doing so. To an expert something would be not quite right.

As for computers and robots replicating human works, see my analogy on computer generated voices reading Shakespeare. Even though their rendition might be a technically perfect rendition of the text, to a human ear something would seem to be wrong about it. The same would go for the emotion channeled into the creative process of making a painting, I don't believe that emotion would be translated into the forgery by computers or robots as human emotion is beyond their ken.

You are right that creating a technically perfect forgery of a digital work of art should be possible.

But TJ *did* argue that the copy would be technically perfect. Sorry if your later arrival got you mixed up in that. However, you're *still* doing it: If it's technically perfect, then there's nothing wrong with it! If it sounds weird, it's *not* technically perfect; instead, it's imperfect speech synthesis. We can go that route, if you like: there is not metaphysical 'emotion' in speech. All aspects of speech (transmission) are 100% acoustic (and visual, if we're including that). I'm a phoneticist, so you're on even shakier ground here.

Once again, I'm perfectly happy to say that autosofts could not exist at high enough ratings to *produce* a 'technically perfect' copy. That is a reasonable statement. The problem is claiming there's a non-physical, 'spiritual' component that even a theoretically perfect autosoft could never hope to achieve. That's some kind of romantic-dualism.