ABOUT THE EPISODE
Noah Charney is a professor of Art History at the American University of Rome and the University of Ljubljana, the founder of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA) and the prolific mind behind a wide body of books and articles whose range is exceeded only by their depth of insight and lucidity of writing. His work in the field of art crime has been praised in such forums as The New York Times Magazine, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, BBC Radio, and Tatler among others. He might however be best known for being the media's go-to art crime detective whenever a spectacular heist happens in the world, during which he has the unenviable tasks of reminding us that art still exists, that art heists aren't usually like what we see in movies and that crimes in the art world reverberate throughout politics, the economy and even terrorism and armed conflicts. Noah's work and ideas deserve at least as much renown as the art that he studies.
In this episode, we talk about why forgers forge for revenge rather than money, how fraud is shifting from the handmade canvas to the digital file, and what happens to authorship, value and crime once AI can both fake a painting and judge whether one is real.
ABOUT SECOND ORDERS
Second Orders is a series of conversations with thinkers, tinkerers and theorists about pivotal changes in science, technology, law and culture, their unintended consequences and what they reveal about how we live and cooperate at every scale.
Website: http://secondorders.co
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Chapters:
00:43 A grand unifying theory of art crime?
09:32 What were art thieves really after?
12:51 Were conquering empires just looting for profit?
15:48 Forging art for revenge or money?
19:23 Is forgery dying out as the gatekeepers lose power?
22:06 Will the next great forgery be entirely digital?
26:30 Can you forge a song or a film the way you forge a painting?
40:30 How would an art criminal actually use AI?
44:02 Who really makes the big bucks in art crime?
49:13 Can AI authentication give unknown artists a fair shot?
51:37 What happens when AI authenticators can't agree?
57:45 Is AI art actually art?
59:52 What excites you about the future?
