This crowdsourced portrait of Einstein turned out to be a lot more popular than I was expecting. Got written up here which resulted in all sorts of attention. Though I am of course a big fan, I didn't realize that Einstein was such a popular media figure.
Crowd Painter
Cyber Raid on Crowdsourced Portrait?
These are possibly the most interesting painting to date. The video of their creation contains a detailed description of our experience with several recent crowdsourced paintings, vandalism of them, a hack of our robot communications, and an attempt to log into and steal control of our servers. This attack was actually featured in a TechTimes article that you can find in the press section.
My favorite painting to come out of all these raids asked the profound question...
Is it Art?
Also, here is a graphics dump of one of the painting's stroke queue. Amazing Stuff.
Crowdsourced Musicians
This triptych was painted by hundreds of people over 6 weeks. The time lapse video shows the final two weeks when the third canvas was being worked on. It is of three Washington D.C. Street Performers that calmed my crying daughter with a soothing rendition of Killing Me Softly.
Crowdsourced Portrait of Mother
Crowdsourced Portrait of the Artist's Mother entry for Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2016.
My First Portrait of Corinne
Crowdsourced Portrait of Corinne.
St. Peters at Harper's Ferry
View of St Peter's from the Shenandoah River painted by half a dozen participants on 11/19/2013. Perhaps the most colorful painting to date. Project took two days amid multiple palette and design changes. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this autumnal meditation is the feint but visible silhouette of Sponge Bob Square Pants in the top right hand corner. As this painting was a crowdsourced painting, complete creative license was handed over to anyone who participated. It would seem that one of the participants was a Sponge Bob fan.
What would happen if I just let anyone paint anything?
Thought we would test out and see what would happen if we gave the users no direction at all and only black and white paint. In earlier paintings there was always a trace image which served as a goal that people could work towards.
Crowdsourced Gandhi
This portrait came together much faster than anticipated. I originally planned to keep it up all week, but after only a day of painting it looked beautiful, so I decided to pull it out of the robot. One of the rare aspects of this painting is that it escaped vandalism.
Crowdsourced Queen Elizabeth
Stopped this painting after the second day. Had originally planned to have it up all week, but it just got too interesting. I would love to find out who added the collar. It is so spooky, so much so, I decided it was done.
Just Received this email about the collar:
"I was who painted the spooky collar on Queen Elizabeth portrait, also paint the face, clothing and FSM (flying spaghetti monster) in the top right. I would like to add that the necklace was a kind of futuristic necklace.
I love your artistic idea is fantastic from Spain I can paint a painting in America. - C Mas"
Crowdsourced Buzz Aldrin
Somewhere in Germany, the imagination of an artist was captured by this portrait meant to commemorate Buzz Aldrin's moon landing. The artist's name was R. Meyer. Where others saw an American Hero, R. Meyer saw a muscle bound psychopath. No matter how many times people tried to paint over his strokes, R. Meyer would return and repaint his vision. Over and over, back and forth, R. Meyer would not be dissuaded, until finally it was time for us to move on to the next painting.
R. Meyer was triumphant and his interpretation won out over all others.
Crowdsourced Self Portrait
I have done self portraits with my robot before, but this is the first crowd sourced one. Left it up for a number of days for people from around the world to work on it. Also, my youngest son did a significant amount of work on it.
Mother of Pigeons
Second in our portrait series lasting the month. We are basically loading in one portrait after another throughout July. This portrait was taken in the same room as the previous one of my brother. The subject spontaneously grabbed a pigeon doll that was lying around and incorporated it in the photo. Not sure why I liked it, but I did and it worked for me.
Crowdsourced Google Event
Crowd Painter was featured on the main floor of Google's Made-With-Code Launch Party. This is the painting that resulted. The #madewithcode initiative is this really great $50 million project by Google to close the gender gap in computer science.
Child Portrait Beta 87
Crowd sourced painting robot test run Beta 87. Good mix of human and AI contributions. Brush cleaner working much better.
Semi-Finalist in Barbican's Dev-Art Competition
Half way through the video you will notice that sometime in the early afternoon of the second day, things get interesting. This must have been when this project got featured on DevArt - a competition we have put our painting robot into. Multiple users from around the world appear to be battling for control of the brush strokes. Two separate vandals put an "X" on Lincoln's face and an anarchy symbol in the background. Someone says "HI". Another person signs their name multiple times. Near the end, a friend's son signs his name down the side and plays Tic-Tac-Toe on Lincoln's face.
The coolest thing to happen, however, is that most of the people just work on the portrait. Someone even spends a good bit of time attempting to repair the "X" that disfigured Lincoln's face. Watching this painting get crowd-sourced was like watching a battle between order and chaos. At the end of the second day, something in the middle prevailed.
Crowdsourced George Washington
Crowdsourced portrait of George Washington. These paintings are becoming more and more interesting. Three attempts at vandalism occurred on this piece but each time moire strokes were performed that repaired most of it. You can still see writing across the bottom and a dollar sign near his forehead.
New York City Skyline
Time Lapse Video of Robotic Painting of New York City Skyline. This painting was completed over the course of three days by CrowdPainter, an online crowd-sourced robotic painting project. For details, visit crowdpainter.com.
Crowdsourced Martin Luther King Memorial
This is a time lapse of a recent painting completed by crowdpainter.com. The painting starts off being painted over another older work, but when the first angle of MLK comes off lacking, a third and final painting begins featuring a close up of his face. The portrait is based on a photo taken of his memorial in the Washington DC Downtown Mall.
Crowdsourced Lincoln Memorial
Early Painting by CrowdPainter. Made while we were still figuring out the cooperative nature of the robot. Mostly robot's algorithms and my contribution.
Crowdsourced Liberty
This is a painting of the Statue of Liberty by CrowdPainter. It is a time-lapsed rendering of a painting that took over two days to complete. At least 3 individuals contributed to this painting, possibly more. This was made while the robot is still in Beta. It is the 37th project by the robot, though admittedly, many of the projects have been small or failed to incomplete. At this point about 5 paintings have been finished, the subject of each being related to a National Park.
