Interactive Mona Lisa: Famous Leonardo da Vinci painting goes digital

The digital "Living Mona Lisa”, which employs artificial intelligence technology, has been produced by a team of 40 French technicians and artists, who worked on the project for nearly a year.

Florent Aziosmanoff, the originator of the interactive version, said the idea was to convert the Mona Lisa into a modern format: "Now she can sense changes in her surroundings. Leonardo da Vinci tried to make her come alive, so it’s appropriate that we’ve taken his intentions a few steps further."

The "Living Mona Lisa" is equipped with a motion sensing device used in interactive video games. It picks up spectators’ movements and their images, allowing her "to react depending on her mood", said Jean-Claude Heudin, the head of the Paris Internet and Multimedia Institute, which developed the artificial intelligence systems.

Mr Aziosmanoff, who specialises in "digital, living art”, said he chose the Mona Lisa because "she is the best known and one of the most iconic characters in the history of art”.

The painting itself hangs in the Louvre museum in Paris, but digital versions will be produced and marketed in different sizes and formats.

Digital paintings are to go on sale in the autumn for "a few hundred euros” while a miniature version can be placed on a pendant and surrounded by jewels.

"Necklaces and other jewellery versions will be sold at different prices depending on whether they have precious stones or not,” Mr Aziosmanoff said.

"This is primarily an artistic project, not a commercial one, but we want to make paintings cheap enough for tourists to buy and take home as a souvenir.”

Mr Heudin acknowledged that the project was "crazy" but said he was attracted to it because it could serve as a prototype.

"One of the future objectives is to develop an emotional context that will take into account the past experiences and interactions of the system."

(telegraph.co.uk)