General physical view of
the painting robot (Mbot)
A new kind of art: the painting robots
Leonel Moura
Henrique Garcia Pereira
The painting robots are artificial ‘organisms’ able to
create their own art forms. They are equipped with environmental awareness and
a small brain that runs algorithms based on simple rules. The resulting
paintings are not predetermined, emerging rather from the combined effects of
randomness and stigmergy, that is, indirect communication trough the
environment. Although the robots are autonomous they depend on a
symbiotic relationship with human partners Not only in terms of starting and
ending the procedure, but also and more
deeply in the fact that the final configuration of each painting is the result
of a certain gestalt fired in the brain of the human viewer. Therefore what we
can consider ‘art’ here, is the result of
multiple agents, some human, some artificial, immerged in a chaotic process
where no one is in control and whose output is impossible to determine.
Hence, a ‘new kind of art’ represents the introduction of
the complexity paradigm in the cultural and artistic realm.
The robots and their collective behaviour
Each robot is equipped
with colour detection sensors, obstacle avoidance sensors, a microcontroller
and actuators, for locomotion and pen manipulation. The microcontroller is an
on-board chip, to which the program that contains the rules linking the sensors
to the actuators is uploaded, prior to each run, through a PC serial interface.
Swarm painting robots
The algorithm that
underlies the program uploaded into each robot’s microcontroller induces
basically two kinds of behaviour: the random behaviour that initialises the
process by activating a pen, based on a small probability (usually 2/256),
whenever the colour sensors read white; and the positive feed-back behaviour
that reinforces the colour detected by the sensors, activating the
corresponding pen (since there are two pens, the colour circle is split into
two ranges - 'warm' and 'cold'). The collective
behaviour of the set of robots evolving in a canvas (the terrarium that limits the space of the experience)is governed by the gradual increase of the
deviation-amplifying feed-back mechanism, and the progressive decrease of the
random action, until the latter is practically completely eliminated. During
the process the robots show an evident behaviour change as the result of the
'appeal' of colour, triggering a kind of excitement not observed during the
initial phase characterized by a random walk. This is due to the
stigmergic interaction between the robots, where one robot in fact reacts to
what other robots have done. According to Grassé (1959), stigmergy is the
production of certain behaviours in agents as a consequence of the effects
produced in the local environment by a previous action of other agents. Thus, the collective
behaviour of the robots is based on randomness and stigmergy.
The emergence of complexity in real time and space
By analysing the above
described course of action of the set of robots, it can be stated that from the
initial random steps of the procedure, a progressive arrangement of patterns
emerges, covering the canvas. These
autocatalytic patterns are definitively non-random structures that are mainly
composed of clusters of ink traces and patches. Hence, this experiment shows in vivo
(in real time and space) how self-organized complexity emerges from a set of
simple rules, provided that stigmergic interaction is effective. The vortices
of concentration of ink spots, i.e., the clusters that arise in the canvas, may
be looked at as the effect of strange attractors, in terms of non-linear
dynamic theory. Also, in the scope of the same theory, the concept of
bifurcation is found in this experiment, since the robots may take one
direction or another, depending on the intensity and spatial position of the
colour detected by their sensors. In fact, this experiment may be understood as
the mapping of some sort of deterministic chaos, displayed in practical terms
in the canvas and witnessed by the viewer. Actually, in spite of each robot
being fed with the same set of rules, its detailed behaviour over time is
unpredictable, and each instance of the outcome produced under similar
conditions is always a singular event, dissimilar from any other.
Artwork, 400 x 500 cm, produced by a group of 10 robots
From a scientific
perspective, the proposed experiment illustrates Prigogine’s concept of
dissipative structures. While receiving energy from outside, the instabilities
and jumps to new forms of organization typical of such structures are the
result of fluctuations amplified by positive feed-back loops. Thus, this kind
of ‘runaway’ feed-back, which had always been regarded as destructive in
cybernetics - as stated by Capra (1996) -, appears as a source of new order and
complexity.
The mind/body problem
The dual mind/body problem (that has
been floating over Western thought since Descartes) is to be overcome by the
‘horizontal’ synergetic combination of both components, discarding any type of
hierarchy, in particular the Cartesian value system, which privileges the
abstract and disembodied over the concrete and embodied. It is fascinating to
infer from the possibility that, since computation - a mental operation - is
physically embodied, the mind/body duality put forward by Descartes must
succumb the way organic/inorganic duality did under Wöhler’s achievement in the
1820s, 'when he synthesized what everyone would have counted an organic
substance - urea - from what everyone would have counted inorganic substances -
ammonia and cyanic acid', in the words of Danto (2001).
In the same line of thought the art
works produced by the painting robots are the result of an indissoluble
multi-agent synergy, where humans and non-humans cooperate to waste time (in
the sense that art as no purpose). With a very peculiar twist, since in this
process it is the robot that stands for the embodied, while the human partner
can be described as the mental and disembodied counterpart.
Making the artists
Modern and contemporary
art distinctive features are 'magnificence and unusefulness' as stressed by
Fernando Pessoa referring to his own masterpiece 'The book of disquiet', and
confirmed by the main artistic tendencies of the 20th century. In the art of
our time the conceptual prevails over the formal, the context over the object
manufacture and the process over the outcome.
If art forms are to be
produced by robots no teleology of any kind should be considered. Accordingly,
all the goal-directed characteristics present in the industrial-military and
entertainment domains of robotics must be avoided. Also bio-inspired algorithms
that have any flavour of 'fitness' in neo-Darwinian terms or any kind of
pre-determined aesthetical output must be regarded as of limited and
contradictory significance.
To the best of our
knowledge, the ‘painting robots’ are the first experiment where robotic art is
understood as a true autonomic process. In particular human creators
deliberately loose control over their creations and, specifically, concentrate on
'making the artists that make the art' (Moura & Pereira, 2004).
Art produced by
autonomous robots can not be seen as a mere tool or device for human
pre-determined aesthetical purpose, although it may constitute a singular
aesthetical experience. The unmanned characteristic of such a kind of art must
be translated in the definitive overcoming of the anthropocentric prejudice
that still dominates Western thought.
The viewer’s perspective
As opposed to 'traditional' artworks, the constructing of the painting by the collective set
of robots can be followed step-by-step by the viewer. Hence, successive phases
of the art-making process can be differentiated.
Painting in progress: 30, 60, 120 and 240 minutes
Even though the same parameters are given to the program commanding the behaviour of the set of
robots, the instances produced are always different from each other, leading to
features like novelty and surprise, which are at the core of contemporary art.
From the viewer’s perspective, the main difference from the usual artistic practice is that
he/she witnesses the process of making it, following the shift from one chaotic
attractor to another. Even though finalized paintings are kept as the memory of
an exhilarating event, the true aesthetical experience focus on the dynamics of picture construction as shared,
distributed and collaborative man/machine creativity. At any given moment, the
configuration presented in the canvas fires a certain gestalt in the viewer, in
accordance with his/her past experience, background and penchant (a
correspondence may be established between the exterior colour pattern and its
inner image, as interpreted by the viewer’s brain).
The propensity for
pattern recognition, embedded in the human perception apparatus, produces in
such a dynamic construction a kind of hypnotic effect that drives the viewer to
stay focusing on the picture’s progress. A similar kind of effect is observed
when one looks at sea waves or fireplaces. However, a moment comes when the
viewer feels that the painting is ‘just right’ and stops the process.
A new kind of art
In the same way as,
throughout time, art production was rooted on several religious, ideological,
representational paradigms - and, after Duchamp, on a contextual paradigm -,
this ‘new kind of art’ is entailed by the complexity paradigm.
References
Capra, F. (1996) The Web of life. London: Flamingo, p. 89
Danto, A. C.(2001) The body/body problem. Berkeley: The
University of California Press, p. 185
Grassé, P. P.(1959) La réconstruction du nid et les
coordinations inter-individuelles chez bellicositermes natalienses et
cubitermes sp La théorie de la stigmergie: Essai d’interpretation des
termites constructeurs, Insectes Sociaux, 6, pp. 41-48
Moura, L. and Pereira, H.G.(2004) Man+Robots Symbiotic Art. Villeurbanne:
Institut d’Art Contemporain, p. 111
