I have spent the past couple of years designing, building, and programming a painting robot named Zanelle. I am starting this blog to discuss my art with the robot, thoughts on robotic art, and explore robotic culture in general.
The idea behind my painting robot began with a personal need I felt for a printing press. I enjoy making artwork but have an extremely hard time parting with it when it sells. Because of this I thought of switching over to printmaking. As a print maker I would be able to keep copies of my work. The only problem with this idea was that I am a painter. Crazy as it sounded, I realized that I could solve my problem by making a painting robot, a “painting press” of sorts.
I imagined building a robot that would mimick my brush strokes and make facsimiles of the paintings I was working on. I then imagined I could sell the original and keep the facsimile. With this goal in mind, I built Zanelle organically, piece by piece. It is still a work in progress, but even so it did not turn out as I first imagined. The good part of this is that what I developed was far more interesting.
A video of Zanelle painting can be seen in this movie…
Keep tuned into this blog for more details and thoughts on art and robotics…
