Smartphone Sensors for Stone Lithography Authentication

Abstract

Nowadays mobile phones include quality photo and video cameras, access to wireless networks and the internet, GPS assistance and other innovative systems. These facilities open them to innovative uses, other than the classical telephonic communication one. Smartphones are a more sophisticated version of classic mobile phones, which have advanced computing power, memory and connectivity. Because fake lithographs are flooding the art market, in this work, we propose a smartphone as simple, robust and efficient sensor for lithograph authentication. When we buy an artwork object, the seller issues a certificate of authenticity, which contains specific details about the artwork itself. Unscrupulous sellers can duplicate the classic certificates of authenticity, and then use them to “authenticate” non-genuine works of art. In this way, the buyer will have a copy of an original certificate to attest that the “not original artwork” is an original one. A solution for this problem would be to insert a system that links together the certificate and the related specific artwork. To do this it is necessary, for a single artwork, to find unique, unrepeatable, and unchangeable characteristics. In this article we propose an innovative method for the authentication of stone lithographs. We use the color spots distribution captured by means of a smartphone camera as a non-cloneable texture of the specific artworks and an information management system for verifying it in mobility stone lithography.