Some Final Thoughts on bitPaintr

Hi again,  

Its been a year since this project was successfully launched. As such here is a recap of how the project went, insight on what I have learned about my own art, as well as a preview of where I am taking things next. This might be a long post, so sit tight.

Some quick practical matters first though. For backers still awaiting your 14"x18" portraits, it should be in the image and time lapse below. If there has been a mix-up and your portrait somehow got overlooked, just send me a message and I will straighten it out.  Also look for any other backer awards such as postcards and line art portraits in coming weeks.

A Year of bitPaintr

I can start by saying that I did not imagine the bitPaintr project doing as well as it did. And I have no problem thanking all the original backers once again - even though you are all probably tired of hearing it. But as a direct result of your support so many good things happened for me over the past year. I could tell you about all of them but that would make this post too long and too boring - so I will just concentrate on the two most significant things that resulted from this campaign.

The first is that I finally found my audience. Slowly at first, then more rapidly once the NPR piece aired, people started hearing about and reacting to my art. And the more people would hear about it, the more media would cover it, and then even more people would hear about it. And while not completely viral, it did snowball and I found myself in dozens of news articles, feature, and video pieces. Here is a list of some of my favorite. This time last year I was struggling to find an audience and would have settled for any venue to showcase my art. Today, I am able to pick and choose from multiple opportunities.

The second most significant part of all this is that I found my voice. Not sure I fully understood my own art before, well not as much as I do now. I had the opportunity to speak to, hang out with, and get feedback from you all, other artists, critics, and various members of the artificial intelligence community. All this interaction has lead me to realize that the paintings my robots produce are just artifacts of my artistic process. I once focused on making these artifacts as beautiful as possible, and while still important to me, I have come to realize that the paintings are the most boring part of this whole thing. 

The interaction, artificial creativity, processes, and time lapse videos are where all the action is. In the past year I have learned that my art is an interactive performance piece that explores creativity and asks the sometimes trite questions of "What is Art?" and "What makes me, Pindar, an Artist?" -  or anyone an artist. This is usually a cliche theme, and as such a difficult topic to address without coming off as pretentious. But I think the way my robots address it is novel and interesting. Well, at least I hope so.

Next Steps

As I close up bitPaintr, I am looking forward to the next robot project called cloudPainter. Will begin by telling you the coolest part about the project which is that I have a new partner, my son Hunter. He is helping me focus on new angles that I had not considered before. Furthermore, our weekend forays into Machine Learning, 3D printing, and experimental AI concepts have really rejuvinated my energy. Already his enthusiasm, input, and assistance has resulted in multiple hardware upgrades. While the machine in the following photo may look like your average run-of-the-mill painting robot, it has two major hardware upgrades that we have been working on.

The first can be seen in the bottom left hand corner of robot. It is the completely custom 3D printed NeuralJet Painthead. Hunter, Dante, and I have been designing and building this device for the last 4 months. It holds and operates five airbrushes and four paintbrushes for maximum painting carnage. The second major hardware improvement can be seen near the top of canvas. You will notice not one, but two fully articulated 7Bot robotic arms. So while the NeuralJet will be used for the brute application of paint and expressive marks, the two 7Bot robotic arms will handle the more delicate details. Furthermore, each robotic arm will have a camera for looking out into its environment and tracking its own progress on the paintings.

Our software is currently receiving a similar overhaul. I would go into detail, but Hunter and I are still not sure of where its going. We are taking and using all of the previous artificial creativity concepts that have gotten us this far, and adding to them. While bitPaintr was a remarkably independent artist, it did have multiple limitations. In this next iteration we are going to see how many of those limitations we can remove. We are not positive what exactly that will look like, but have given ourselves a year to figure it out.

If you would like to continue following our progress, check out our blog at cloudpainter.com. Things are just getting started on our sixth painting robot and we are pretty excited about it.

Thanks for everything,

Pindar Van Arman

cloudpainter Hardware Complete - 2 Robotic Arms and 5 Airbrushes

cloudpainter, as we currently imagine it, will have two 7bot robotic arms and five airbrushes on our Neural Jet painthead. The canvas will be on a track and move up and down between the painting tools.

We are thinking that when a painting begins, the Neural Jet will use its airbrushes to paint a quick background.  

Then the canvas will be moved up to an area where the robotic arms can use artist brushes to touch up the painting. If it needs more airbrushing, it will move back to that area, back and forth as needed.

There is still a lot of fine tuning we need to make to the hardware to make all of this possible.  But at least we now know the direction we are heading in and we can begin to write the software.

Integrating 7Bot with cloudpainter

Could not be happier with the 7Bot that we are integrating into cloudpainter.  

The start-up robotic arm manufacturers that make 7Bot sent us one for evaluation and we have been messing around with it for the past week.  The robot turned out to be perfect for our application, and also it was just plain fun. We have experimented with multiple different configurations inside of cloudpainter and think the final one will look something like the photoshop mockup above.

At this point here is how Hunter and I are thinking it will create paintings. 

Our Neural Jet will be on an XY Table and airbrush a quick background. The 7Bots, each equipped with a camera and an artist's brush will then take care of painting in details.  The 7Bots will use AI, Feedback Loops, and Machine Learning to execute and evaluate each and every brush stroke. They will also be able to look out into the world and paint things it finds interesting, particularly portraits.

The most amazing thing about all this is that until recently, doing all of this would have been prohibitively expensive.  Something similar to this set up when I started 10 years ago would have been $40,000-50,000, maybe even more. Now you can buy and construct just about all the components that cloudpainter would need for under $5,000.  If you wanted to go with a scaled down version, you could probably build most of its functionality for under $1,000. The most expensive tool required is actually the 3D printer that we bought to print the components for the Neural Jet seen in bottom left hand corner of picture.  Even the 7Bots cost less than the printer.

Will leave you with this video of us messing around with the 7Bot. Its a super fun machine.

Also if you are wondering just what this robot is capable of, check out their video.  We are really excited to be integrating this into cloudpainter.

Its an amazing machine.

Painting Robot's Ultimate Goal is to Eliminate All Humans

If you want a quick synopsis of the current state of my painting robot, this Thrillist Feature captures it perfectly.  They somehow made the otherwise dry subject of artificial creativity entertaining, and sometimes funny.  I really appreciate all the work of the film crew that worked on this with me and brought out some of the best aspect of this project.  Big Thanks to Vin, Joshua, Mary, Peter, Mat, and Paul.  

Ten Years of Progress on Painting Robots

These pics both show my very first painting robot head and the most recent one.  The first, which could hold only one brush, was made from parts found lying around my house including old pieces of wood, a handmade electromagnet, tape, and deck parts.  The most recent can hold and operate nine different kinds of brushes and is almost completely 3D printed.  Some of the plastic even glows in the dark.

Airbrush Actuator Complete

It is amazing how much an invitation from the White House can speed up development.  Long hours this weekend went into getting a working airbrush prototype.  While paint brushes will remain the primary mark making device in the Neural Jet, it will be cool to have them backed up by five airbrushes with the ability to quickly paint backgrounds.  

Also cool that we went with the servos instead of something like a solenoid to control air flow.  With our servos we can actuate the air coming out to 16 different pressures.  So mixing becomes possible, and since we have 5 airbrushes on the paint head, the Neural Jet will be able to paint over 1,000,000 colors (16^5).  Yeah this part of the project really is just re-inventing a printer, but coupled with the other mark making tools that are coming, it will be on the next level.  You can see the prototype in action below.

Neural Jet Modular Paint Head Complete

We have finished printing what we think will be the final paint tray. In the image above you can see how it will be oriented to the canvas when it is being used to paint. Coincidentally enough, we arrived at the final design on the Model T - Like Henry Ford's car.

(Model T) can hold multiple paint brushes and up to five airbrushes, with modules that fit three different types of airbrushes.  People sometimes have a hard time imagining what we are showing in the photos, so I have included the following schematic that shows how the 5 airbrushes fit together.

The empty slots in the graphic above can be fitted with just about any mark making device, though I am partial to paint brushes.  The reason we want to use paint brushes is that we have yet to find anything that can make marks similar to those in the image below.  And thats what we are ultimately after.

Using 3D Printer to Manufacture Parts

Nothing makes me realize that The Future Is Now more than our new 3D Printer. We are manufacturing the parts we need for the Neural Jet. And the creative process has taken on an iterative nature.  The plan is to have a modular paint head and our design has taken us through seven iterations so far. You can see several of the early wedges that will fit together on our modular head in the pic below.

Some of the attempts went poorly, as can be seen by the tangled mess of plastic on the left. But the design got better as did our proficiency with the 3D printer.  Ultimately we ended up with the following version, called Tray G.

As can be seen in the following picture, this tray holds a standard sized airbrush and resevoir almost perfectly.  When arrayed in a circle, all the airbrushes should be pointing to a central point, and hopefully be able to paint in unison with one another.