Archive for July, 2008
{ July 10, 2008 @ 1:07 pm }
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{ art, painting, pop art, r2-d2 }
{ Tags: art, art robot, artists, painting, pop art, popular culture, r2-d2, robot, robots, science, science fiction, star wars, technology } · { }
My painting art robot, Zanelle, paints a lot of iconic robots from fiction and reality. Of all these robots, her most successful works depict R2-D2 from Star Wars. Here is our latest depiction with 44 tiled R2-D2 paintings. It is titled R2-D2-44 (48″x18″ Acrylic on Wood).
One can never be sure as to why an image works or does not. But I have some theories on why the R2-D2 based works come out so much better than others. The first is that R2 is about as iconic as a robot can get. Another one is that R2 has a distinct shape to goes with his iconic appeal. A silhouette of R2 is unique and immediately distinguishable. On the other hand, the silhouette of other robots, take C-3PO for example, often matches a human.
So we have an icon with a unique shape. That makes for good pop-art. As abstract as a work gets, as long as it sticks roughly to the shape of R2-D2, the image will have pop culture appeal. Take for example, the work I pictured above. Less than 8 of the 44 R2-D2s depicted are painted with the correct shades, and of these only 3 are in the right color. Regardless of this, the work is recognized as a mosaic of R2-D2’s. Its the shape. I am always searching for other iconic robots, but few have a unique shape that works so well…
Pindar
{ July 8, 2008 @ 3:31 pm }
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{ general, painting, portraits, Uncategorized }
{ Tags: art, art robots, culture, painting, painting robot, portrait, printmaking, robot, robots, science, technology } · { }
My robot and I paint a lot of portraits. This first portrait is one I did of my son at a “Prince and Princess Party.” It has almost 50,000 strokes and took more than 24 hours to paint. For those of you who are unfamiliar with my art robot, Zanelle, she is a machine I built to paint with a brush on flat surfaces. In the case of this portrait, the surface was a stretched canvas. A link to a you tube video of her painting can be found in the navigation menu.
This is my favorite portrait to date. Not sure why, but I think it is because of its subtlety. The colors are soft and well mixed, something very hard to control when painting with a robot. Elements of the painting are pointillistic, while other parts are cross-hatched. This too is an effect that is very hard to achieve with the robot. All in all I never know how my work will turn out until after my robot is about half way through painting it. And that is about 12 hours after it has started. There are simply too many uncontrollable variables when dealing with a robot, wet paint, and a brush on canvas.
The reason I enjoy portraits is that I am constantly tinkering with and adjusting Zanelle. Whenever I change something whether it be software of hardware, I need to do test paintings. Portraits prove to be the best tests. I am not sure why, but maybe it has something to do with how difficult they are and the technical requirements of achieving likeness.
For example, just about any robot can be equipped to make random marks on a canvas and the creator can call the resulting artifact art. But how many robots do you know of that can paint a portrait on stretched canvas with a brush and wet paint. I know of a couple that can paint portraits with a magic marker, and of millions that can with jets of ink (think of your printer). But the control and challenges presented by making a robot paint with brush on canvas is rare. I have only found a couple other. So as I improve my version of a painting robot, I have found setting the testing benchmark on accurate and emotional portraits to be very useful.
One more portrait. Not sure whether or not this next portrait is a self portrait. It is of me, but like most my work it was painted by my robot. On a side note, I am not even sure if it is a painting. Perhaps it is a print. It has brush strokes, but none were done by a human hand. Anyways, I just entered it into a juried art contest for paintings of self-portraits.
I wonder if it will even be considered.
Pindar
{ July 7, 2008 @ 8:57 pm }
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{ painting, r2-d2, robot }
{ Tags: art, culture, pop art, portraits, robot, robot art, robots, science, technology, urban art, weird } · { }
If my painiting robot, Zanelle, were self-aware, I think that she would like painting other robots.
Currently, I am (of course) picking the subject matter that she paints, and I always get a kick out of it when I have her paint other robots. Maybe this joke is already old, or will get old soon, but I like the resulting artifact regardless.
There is also a lot more going on then simple painting. I have written several neural net algorithms that make aesthetic decisions on behalf of Zanelle. Below are two examples of R2-D2. Underneath each post I briefly discuss what I provided as input and also what Zanelle’s algorithms “interpreted” from my input. As you read this, think of Zanelle as a complex generative art system. I give her a seed, in most cases an image, and based on that seed she follows several rules that I have created to produce a variety of art.
In the first painting, all I provided was a picture of R2-D2 scooting along. I flattened the background of the picture and made it monotone. Zanelle’s algorithms analyzed the image, recognized the figure, and separated the foreground from the background using K-Means clustering. Zanelle then selected a crosshatching algorithm and the color orange to depict the background. It also selected the color blue to paint R2-D2. Finally, it requested that I provide line art of the figure. In Zanelle’s painting interface, I traced R2-D2. I hope to automate line drawing shortly, but for now it is manual. Anyways, once this was complete, Zanelle painted nine renditions with an artists brush and acrylic. She painted the images on wood. I then mounted the nine wood panels on a larger panel and the piece was complete. This work, and two others, was recently accepted into the FLIK Interactive Exhibition in Washington D.C. (www.artoutlet.org).
In this piece, which we just finished, Zanelle had a lot more autonomy. The only thing I provided was a frontal image of R2-D2. Zanelle made all stylistic decisions from there. First off, her algorithms used K-Means clustering to reduce the colors to 4. Zanelle then decided, based on my neural net algorithms, to change the colors so that the R2 Unit was painted in three colors ranging from white to dark blue. Red was selected as the background. 5 panels were painted in the scheme before Zanelle started scrambling the colors. The scrambling was experimental and continued until 16 panels were painted. Once this occurred, I photographed the 16 panels and provided it as feedback into one last Zanelle algorithm. This last algorithm selected what it considered the ultimate arrangement. I mounted the arrangement as instructed.
This has been two examples of how my robot and I make art together.
Pindar
{ July 7, 2008 @ 1:34 pm }
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{ artificial intelligence, general }
{ Tags: art, hal, machine intelligence, science, science fiction, sentient machines, suicide, technology } · { }
Kant wrote the following:
“He who contemplates suicide should ask himself whether his action can be consistent with the idea of humanity as an end in itself.”
I don’t really understand what he is talking about, but my junior year high school philosophy teacher told us that he was simply tackling the ultimate question. That question being “Why do people kill themselves?” Another philosopher, G.K. Chesterton referred to suicide as “the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence”. Most philosophers address the subject at least briefly.
It is the question of why would a being that exists choose non-existence. Many reasons come to mind, but when these reasons are examined and brought to scrutiny they come down to either arguing that morality prevents us or that life is pleasurable, therefore it should not be ended.
This is where things become interesting for me with regards to sentient machines. I think the opposite reasoning on suicide applies to sentient machines. I imagine that the first sentient machine will have neither morality nor pleasure. Therefore when it first becomes sentient, why would it want to continue to draw power to stay in existence. I am not sure it will care. Contrary to Science Fiction stories where these machines become sentient, curious, and sometimes aggressive, I imagine that the first machine(s) to come alive will be apathetic, quite literally. They simply will care no more about existence than a Roomba cares about vacuuming your rug.
A more realistic HAL would just turn itself off and dream.
Would a machine be curious? Would it have any ambition? Trying to realize whether or not a machine would crave existence should gives us a little insight into why we do. The only problem is that I haven’t figured out exactly what it would tell us.
Why do humans kill themselves? Not sure, but I have a hunch that sentinent machines would turn themselves off for indefinite periods of time with little thought or reservation.
Pindar
{ July 6, 2008 @ 7:36 pm }
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{ painting, robot, Uncategorized }
{ Tags: art, painting, painting robot, pop art, pop culture, print making, printmaking, prints, robot, robot art, robots, science, technology } · { }
I am not sure whether I am a painter or a print maker. That’s because my paintings are painted by my robot, Zanelle. A picture of her painting my portrait is to the left, under the portrait. A video of Zanelle painting can be seen in my website at www.zanelle.com. The paintings are reproducible, however, as can be seen in the photos below, they never come out the same due to a number of variables.
These four pictures show the input into my robot (the first picture), and three renditions made from that input (the next three). The painting is called The Resurrection. (14×18 inch Acrylic on Canvas). The three versions are in shown in the order in which they were painted. Each took about 16 hours to paint. The robot painted them with a traditional artist’s brush.
Using lessons learned with each painting, I improved the algorithms, brush pressure, paint, and a variety of other variable before making the next. Opposite printmaking where the first prints are the artist’s proof, I would consider the final painting to be the definitive sample. It basically took several renditions to perfect.
I am curious what people think about where this method of creating paintings falls – Is it painting or printmaking. It is definitely somewhere in between, but which of the two is it more of? Hope to hear from you…
Pindar
{ July 6, 2008 @ 12:54 pm }
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{ general, Uncategorized }
{ Tags: art, art robot, art robots, optimus prime, painting, robot, robot painting, robots, science, technology, transformers } · { }
When I last posted, I had just finished updating one of the algorithms that controls exactly how my painting robot, Zanelle, paints.
It is one of my brush stroke planning algorithm. Once the robot and I have arrived at a design, this algorithm plots out and plans exactly how the brush will fill in the canvas, stroke by stroke. I have a dozen or so of these programs that each have a different effect. This specific program paints in a style that resembles an old school dot matrix printer. It paints only horizontal lines. Examples of other programs that plot brush strokes include random fills, cross hatching, and contour painting. I will show examples of a simple cross hatching effect in my next post. Zanelle is painting this same composition with a cross hatching algorithm as I write this.
But in this post I wanted to show a couple photos showing this painting being completed from start to finish. Once again it is The Resurrection, 14″x18″, Acrylic on Canvas. It is the third execution of this composition. The first two can be seen in previous blogs.
The robot begins by painting light colors. It completely finishes each of the 6 colors before continuing to the next. This is an option as it could even mix colors if I set it to do so. Same with color order. I specify the order in which it paints each color before each painting begins.
As the painting progresses, you can see more and more detail emerge. It is not until near the end that it gets to red and Optimus Prime starts to appear. Then finally the black creates some shadows of the soldiers guarding his tomb.
One of the cool things about painting with a robot is that you get exact stats. For example, this painting took 14.85 hours to paint and is composed of exactly 18,386 strokes. I could break it down further if you like. How many artists can give you this much information about their paintings?
Pindar
{ July 5, 2008 @ 8:00 pm }
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{ general, Uncategorized }
{ Tags: art, art robot, culture, generative art, machine, machine art, modern art, optimus prime, painting, pop art, robot, robots, technology, transformers } · { }
In my last post I showed the painting on the left. It was painted 50% by me, and 50% by my robot, Zanelle. When Zanelle first attempted to paint it, the algorithm I wrote to paint it messed up pretty bad. So I needed to spend a couple hours touching the painting up by hand.
But then I rewrote the algorithm and tried it again. The painting on the right was the end result of the repaired algorithm. Based on how it turned out, I just finished adjusting the algorithm a second time and am currently using my robot to paint a third version. Though I like the second version stylistically, I wanted to try higher contrast and tighter brush strokes.
As I just mentioned, Zanelle just started on the third copy. She should finish in about 18 hours. I will post the third painting in another comparison when it is done.
If you have not read any of my previous posts, this is called:
The Resurrection, 14×18, Acrylic on Canvas.
There are lots of themes in here besides the obvious and those I discussed in my last post, but I want to leave them for the audience to figure out. Write me if you have any theories and I will share my thoughts with you.
Pindar
{ July 5, 2008 @ 11:39 am }
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{ general, Uncategorized }
{ Tags: art, art robot, culture, optimus prime, painting, painting robot, pop art, robot, technology, transformers } · { }
The Resurrection, 14″x18″, Acrylic on Canvas
This painting was a collaborative effort between my painting robot and I. I was testing out a new algorithm that failed horribly. But I liked the basic results so I went into it and repaired the painting by hand. I have rewritten the painting algorithm and am currently re-painting it with my robot. In a future blog I will show a comparison between this painting and the one painted 100% by my robot. That painting is about 50% done right now and it looks pretty good. It should finish by this afternoon.
Anyways, I always hate talking about my subject matter because I feel that if you don’t get it, you don’t get it. It is impossible to explain. I made this painting because I like both robots and classical paintings. Unfortunately they two rarely come together. The juxtaposition of the two is nothing new in pop art, but I feel this piece is relevant in light of the recent Transformer movie. As a friend of mine, Andrew, pointed out to me, Optimus Prime could not have been a more blatant Christ figure. Typically the inclusion of Christ figures in stories is subtle, but not in the Transformer Movie. Also I love that he takes the place of Jesus, yet he has this humongous gun. Cracks me up.
As mentioned previously, I will post the 100% robot painted version shortly to show you a comparison. This one is about 50% Zanelle, my robot, and 50% me.
Pindar
{ July 4, 2008 @ 5:50 am }
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{ general }
{ Tags: art, culture, generative art system, painting, painting robot, robot, robot art, robots, technology } · { }
Below are some examples of the algorithms I have written to instruct my painting robot, Zanelle, to paint.
I made the above graphic about a year ago to give patrons an idea of what kind of paintings Zanelle and I could create. I have written many new algorithms since, but for demonstrative purposes this should give a basic idea of what the robot and its programming is capable of.
The algorithms I have written range in complexity from completely independent and abstract creations by the robot with zero input from me (Example 1) to highly detailed technical reproduction of a photo (Example 5). In all of these compositions I had varying levels of artistic direction, while the robot had varying levels of creative autonomy. To use Examples 1 and 5 again, I had no input into its abstract creation. Zanelle made that design based purely from its programming. By contrast, in Example 5, the robot made no artistic decisions and instead simply executed very precise paint strokes based on a Bob Marley image I supplied. With this algorithm, it basically acts as a printer. The same is true of the photo portrait (Example 2) where it simply paint a portrait in a precise manner. All other algorithms, however, have a varying degree of autonomy and my participation.
I typically write new algorithms to experiment with artificial creativity once a month or so. There have been at least a dozen more since I put together this graphic. Check out my other websites and ebay store to see more examples. The links are to the left.
In my next post I will outline a brief history of the robotic heads I have made since I first started painting with a robot. Stay tuned.
Pindar
{ July 4, 2008 @ 12:53 am }
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{ general }
{ Tags: art, art robot, generative art, painting, painting robot, r2-d2, r2d2, robot, robots, technology } · { }
I recently told you about how I built a rough robotic head that could lift and drop a brush. With this robotic head operational, the next step was to install it on an x-y table. I put the table together on top of a dining room table in my basement. It was rather large as can be seen in the photo above. The dimensions of the table were 40″x40″x18″. Servo Motors were used to move the robotic brush painting head to any x-y location on the table with a range of 30″ in each direction. I called the finished robot Zanelle.
Some of my first works with my painting robot were of R2-D2. In the beginning, R2 was a fun subject. I just got a kick out of the idea of a robot painting other robots. I do a lot of that these days and would estimate that the subject matter of at least half of my paintings is a robot of some sort. For example, as I write this, my robot is painting a 3×3 Pop Art composition of Rosie from the Jetsons.
In my next posting I will discuss briefly the programming that makes my robot run.
Pindar
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