Better Sensors, Better Forgers: An Adversarial Loop

This essay zooms into the topic of art forgeries and how the refinement of authentication methods and the dissemination of the resulting expert knowledge has led to detectives and forgers alike being better prepared. Following a brief navigation into the mechanics of art forensics, it discusses several relevant case studies that display the importance of authority delegation in solving the puzzle of authentication. In art attribution, a consensus needs to be reached between the main forgery detection “sensors”: the eyes of art historian for stylistic diagnostic; the eyes of hardware analytical and optical devices that gather scientific evidence; the eyes of the scientific experts to interpret the latter properly. Particular focus is given to the correlated effects activated by the increasing popularity of digitization of cultural heritage (CH) objects. Digital repositories of cultural heritage scientific data have themselves become a subject for forgery and contamination. This introduces the need to dive into a new typology of sensors: forensic software, that can identify the alteration of scientific images. Nonetheless, software may also be employed by forgers to maliciously modify digital data in order to influence a certain diagnostic. This essay frames all the above-mentioned aspects in a cyclic adversarial process, where the progress of sensors determines that of forgers and vice versa. Finally, ethical and legal considerations are explored with respect to the prevention of art forgeries and the reciprocal influence between researchers and forgers.