When you start to explore the work of an artist, you begin to understand the touches that make them instantly recognisable. For example, it is relatively easy to tell a Rembrandt from a Van Gogh. Explore further and you realise that style changes over time. Artists who settle into a particular way of doing things for many years often reach a point where they consciously try different approaches. Even then it is often possible to discern developing themes. The same certainly applies to music and, thinking further, probably applies across a whole range of human endeavours; if you don’t enforce consistent ‘branding’, individual signatures express themselves.

However, you can extract elements of style from an artist or a particular work and then use these to create something new. The video above is a fascinating extrapolation of that concept, taking a source painting and then algorithmically applying it to a piece of video.

Points to ponder: will there be a time in the near future where we pick a film we want to watch and can then remix the visuals and sounds with reference to other works of art? And, would that make us more or less creative?