WHEN WILL MUGGLES DEVELOP MOVING PORTRAITS?

“We have discovered nothing,” Pablo Picasso once said of modern art. The great Spanish painter, and the co-inventor of collage, was speaking in 1940 as he emerged from the newly-discovered Lascaux caves in the Dordogne. Carbon isotope analysis of the charcoal used in pictures of horses at Chauvet, south-central France, had shown that prehistoric cave art was at least 30,000 years old, a discovery that prompted Picasso’s famous rethink about the progress of art. Because the horse paintings were just as artistic and complex as the later Lascaux paintings, it had indicated that art developed much earlier than had been realized. The cave art found in parts of France and Spain had shown ancient man to be a remarkably talented artist.

But perhaps Picasso would change his mind if he’d seen magical portraits. Magical portraits could walk and talk. Their subjects might even have moved from frame to frame. Good muggle portrait art depends on the charisma of the sitter and the skill of the painter to bring them to life. But magical portraits took it to another dimension—they actually moved and behaved like their subjects. And the extent to which the magical portrait interacted with the viewer very much depended not on the talent of the artist, but on the power of the magical subject depicted.

Muggle art is meant to capture the essence of the sitter—magical art went one step further. When a magical portrait was taken, some of the sitter’s essence, perhaps their favorite phrases and definitive deportment, was captured to ensure the painting was a true representation. Witness the portrait of Sir Cadogan, who was always challenging the viewer to a fight, or was forever falling off his horse. Or the Fat Lady portrait at the Gryffindor tower entrance, forever adoring good food, drink, and the highest security, long after the Fat Lady herself had passed away into wizarding history.

The idea of magical portraits was ingeniously altered to suit the plot. In the Goblet of Fire, which begins with gossip in a local tavern, the people in the portraits do indeed move from frame to frame, playing Chinese whispers with the latest chinwag. At more festive times, when the wine flowed and the living was easy, the subjects of the portraits got a little plastered. And, after Hogwarts had a spring clean, the portraits complained about the cleaning and grumped about their skin feeling a little raw. The magical portraits become beacons of ominous portent too. In the Prisoner of Azkaban, the Fat Lady became a plot focus when knife slashes were found in her frame.

And yet magical portraits had certain limits in space and time. Few portraits were capable of an in-depth analysis of the more intricate aspects of their lives. The portraits really were mere two-dimensional depictions of the sitting wizard or witch, as seen by the artist. And yet the rare magical portraits were capable of so much more. They could countenance far more interaction with ongoing events in the living world.

Consider, for example, the portraits at Hogwarts of headmasters, or headmistresses, painted before their death. Once the portrait was done, the head teacher in question could store the portrait away and regularly visit it, instructing the interactive painting how to act and behave just like himself or herself. In so doing, the head teachers transferred many insights, much knowledge, and useful memories that could be useful to future successors of the same office. The range and depth of wisdom held within the headmasters’ office was thus profound. Those who accepted the surface impression of the office as sleepy and inactive really were missing the vital point of the very presence of the magical portraits.

But what progress has been made towards moving portraits in the muggle world? Or is Picasso correct when he suggests we’ve essentially discovered nothing in the last 30,000 years since the days of prehistoric cave portraits?

The Muggle Moving Portrait

Imagine some of the greatest moments captured in a muggle moving portrait. The greatest soccer goal of all time, by Diego Maradona, for example. A truly fabulous few seconds from the 1986 World Cup as Maradona pirouettes through 180 degrees, slips deftly between player after player, slaloms deep into the penalty box, dummies the keeper, and adroitly slips the ball over the line and into a billowing net.

Or perhaps a moving portrait of one of the greatest ever works of art—The Garden of Earthly Delights. A triptych painted by Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch between 1490 and 1510, the painting is among the most intricate and enigmatic paintings of Western history, and filled with iconography and symbolism that have sparked debate for centuries.

Bosch’s masterpiece is a mysterious invented world, full of strange and daunting details. This imposing portrait features a man with a tree for a body, who gazes out from Hell, giant birds dropping fruit into the mouths of naked people, slithering creatures invading paradise, and a devil-bird that devours a man whole. What is the meaning of all this, the most famous of paintings? Perhaps Heaven and Hell are not the destinations of your soul, but states of being that live inside you—no one knows for sure. But a muggle moving portrait of The Garden of Earthly Delights could be interrogated about its meaning.

And then we could develop moving portraits for famous moments from history. The self-immolation of Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc in 1963, perhaps, who set himself on fire in protest of the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government. Or maybe the footprint of astronaut Neil Armstrong on the surface of the moon. A feat that would have derived scorn only decades before, the historical achievement of all human nations in space meant that, no matter what happens to humans in the future of this planet, his footprint will remain.

But how would a muggle moving portrait be made? There is, of course, the GIF. GIFs have wobbled across thousands of webpages, fluttered within myriads of Facebook profiles, and transformed countless embedded Tumblrs. GIFs can be seen in animated advertising, the sign-off signatures of email, and social media avatars. In short, GIFs are everywhere. The acronym ‘GIF’ stands for ‘graphics interchange format’. The image format was designed for a digital space that was just coming of age. Developed by Steve Wilhite of Compuserve in June 1987, the GIF began as black and white image transfers, then moved to 256 colors, while still keeping a compressed format that the slow internet speeds of the day could easily handle. Today, it seems, folk are fascinated by the GIF, as it has become de rigueur on the web, a default brand of internet humor, and an essential for viral YouTube videos.

But can the GIF transfer to muggle newspapers, like the magical portraits in wizarding world newspapers such as the Daily Prophet and The New York Ghost? Britain’s Empire magazine claims to have taken inspiration from the wizarding world and produced the world’s first moving-image cover. The magazine published the image in a limited-edition celebration of the launch of the Potter spin-off movie, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The limited-edition cover looked something like an enchanted newspaper, and was modelled on The New York Ghost newspaper from the Fantastic Beasts story.

The Empire images move, with two such portraits embedded into the magazine cover. The tech hidden in the magazine cover (a double layer of card and an embedded video-screen) allowed reader interaction by enabling a press play option on the portraits. Beneath the card sat the necessary microchips and circuit boards, enabling the portraits to come to life with the press of a button. The portraits in question were an exclusive behind-the-scenes clip of Fantastic Beasts, and another showing the movie’s trailer. It may not yet be an artificially intelligent muggle version of a magical portrait, but it’s a start.