I am just posting some pictures of my robots latest R2-D2 portrait. The first picture was taken after Zanelle, my painting robot had been working for about an hour.
This next picture was taken at around the 8th hour.
And this final picture is of the completed painting.
This R2-D2 portrait took about 12 hours to complete.
Pindar
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
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
Art and Robots 