Benjamin Grosser : Interactive Robotic Painting Machine

The 'interactive robotic painting machine' by american artist benjamin grosser creates paintings 
in response to its aural environment, in a project that investigates the intersections of technology, 
consciousness, art, and interaction in today's increasingly technologically mediated society.

during a performance, sound is captured via a microphone and subjected to fourier analysis to be broken down 
into useful data for the machine. this information is fed into a genetic algorithm that makes decisions about the painting process, 
altering the robot's behaviour in realtime. the functional building blocks of the project are painting 'gestures', 
broken down into data such as the amount of pressure to be used in a brush stroke to the amount of paint to add to the brush.

three networked computers manage the painting system the first runs the central control software, written in python, 
that begins each painting with a randomly selected set of painting gestures and takes audio data as input 
over the course of the painting. a second manages the brush camera and projection, and performs the audio analysis 
whose data is sent as input to the first machine. the third computer manipulates the robot itself, 
accepting movement commands from the control system and activating stepper motors correspondingly.

the genetic decision-making algorithm behind 'interactive robotic painting machine' means that the painting 
is not a direct mapping of what it hears, and that in fact in the presence of the same sound, 
would likely create two similar but not identical works.

Interactive Robotic Painting Machine (2011) from benjamin grosser on Vimeo.

Source : Benjamin Grosser via Designboom