Some interesting permutations of Gerard Richter's 1024 Colours

preprint OA: closed CC-BY-4.0
📄 Open PDF Full text JSON View at publisher

Abstract

Abstract This paper focus on Gerhard Richter's painting '1024 Colours', in particular the search for alternative colour permutations to the one randomly defined. The trigger was an observation by the artist "that light would have taken more than 400 billion years to travel from the first painting to the last", if he had painted all possible permutations. A system was developed to find the 1024-permutation that best matches any given base image, using optimisation techniques and colour distances as a measure of colour similarity. The results indicate that it is usually possible to recognise the base image content in the 1024-permutation, even for complex images.
Full text 8,850 characters · extracted from preprint-html · click to expand
Some interesting permutations of Gerard Richter's 1024 Colours | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Some interesting permutations of Gerard Richter's 1024 Colours Andre R.S. Marcal This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-7632680/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract This paper focus on Gerhard Richter's painting '1024 Colours', in particular the search for alternative colour permutations to the one randomly defined. The trigger was an observation by the artist "that light would have taken more than 400 billion years to travel from the first painting to the last", if he had painted all possible permutations. A system was developed to find the 1024-permutation that best matches any given base image, using optimisation techniques and colour distances as a measure of colour similarity. The results indicate that it is usually possible to recognise the base image content in the 1024-permutation, even for complex images. Computational Mathematics Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Gerhard Richter permutations optimisation image processing colour distance histogram matching Full Text Additional Declarations The authors declare no competing interests. Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-7632680","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":516079729,"identity":"24615346-ced4-47c8-a844-1b3b02df4fea","order_by":0,"name":"Andre R.S. Marcal","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAA5klEQVRIie3OsWrCQBzH8V8QkuXQ9VziK/yDgw7WvsqVQKYUBBdHQdAlD3DSvkQpOCcc6JIHCFyGQF/gxgwdRLAUOpxxK3Lf6bd84Ae4XP8z+hlebmZ3EhQyua68K1GsCxm8bQ7G4DCa7FSjZmIO0mv/y1gIr4/LvYSO3suEVCpiUJ0HZD1WpeMeg/YkB6nXNgdVwuc2MrqQb+hnyQOjpqIDoQsB9IvkjBS6kKhKll5GOpYsXRSZiNmwLnZUWkhYxZ9oV/pJBqePphXzsK83x2ZlIdd7v5OBe9ub4E8c/r3E5XK5HrszfR9Qn4yEggsAAAAASUVORK5CYII=","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8501-0974","institution":"Fac. Ciencias, University of Porto","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Andre","middleName":"R.S.","lastName":"Marcal","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2025-09-16 16:47:04","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":{"humanSubjects":false,"vertebrateSubjects":false,"conflictsOfInterestStatement":false,"humanSubjectEthicalGuidelines":false,"humanSubjectConsent":false,"humanSubjectClinicalTrial":false,"humanSubjectCaseReport":false,"vertebrateSubjectEthicalGuidelines":false},"doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7632680/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7632680/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":91504100,"identity":"1d81cd7e-2cb9-4143-ace9-2ec4e476f2eb","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-09-17 08:06:52","extension":"pdf","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":6316397,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"GR1024Farbenv2.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7632680/v1_covered_502e4908-177f-4c3f-a38d-637bf8750d62.pdf"}],"financialInterests":"The authors declare no competing interests.","formattedTitle":"\u003cp\u003eSome interesting permutations of Gerard Richter's 1024 Colours\u003c/p\u003e","fulltext":[],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":false,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":true,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"University of Porto","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":true,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":true,"isPdf":true,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"Gerhard Richter, permutations, optimisation, image processing, colour distance, histogram matching","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7632680/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7632680/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eThis paper focus on Gerhard Richter's painting '1024 Colours', in particular the search for alternative colour permutations to the one randomly defined. The trigger was an observation by the artist \"that light would have taken more than 400 billion years to travel from the first painting to the last\", if he had painted all possible permutations. A system was developed to find the 1024-permutation that best matches any given base image, using optimisation techniques and colour distances as a measure of colour similarity. The results indicate that it is usually possible to recognise the base image content in the 1024-permutation, even for complex images.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"Some interesting permutations of Gerard Richter's 1024 Colours","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2025-09-17 07:58:44","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7632680/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"f11c1505-867e-428f-a8cb-81463eab68ee","owner":[],"postedDate":"September 17th, 2025","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"posted","subjectAreas":[{"id":54828804,"name":"Computational Mathematics"},{"id":54828805,"name":"Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning"}],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2026-02-09T11:54:54+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2025-09-17 07:58:44","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-7632680","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-7632680","identity":"rs-7632680","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"8U1c8b4HqxoKbykW_rLl7","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}

Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below. Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy (via DOI) is the canonical version.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Ask this paper AI returns verbatim quotes from the full text · source: preprint-html

Answers must be backed by verbatim quotes from this paper's full text. Hallucinated quotes are dropped automatically; if no verbatim passage answers the question, we say so. How this works

Citation neighborhood (no data yet)

We don't have any in-corpus citations linked to this paper yet. This is a recent paper (2025) — citers typically take a year or two to land, and the OpenAlex reference graph may still be filling in.

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-05-20T01:45:00.602351+00:00
unpaywall
last seen: 2026-05-29T02:00:03.542394+00:00
License: CC-BY-4.0