The Man Who Taught a Robot to Paint

Hi, readers! It's Li here. Today, I have a guest post for you from fellow Every writer Babe Howard. It's a deep investigation of a new technology: a robotic printer that can be programmed to produce real oil paintings on the the level of a human master artist. Will this technology democratize artistic expression, making everyone a painter? Will it change how we think of who an 'artist' is? How does technology change what it means to create? In his conversations with the man behind the robot, and through his own artistic experiments with it, Babe explores these questions and more.

The canvas appeared, blank and pixelated, captured from multiple angles on a range of cameras. One of them observed the painting area in its entirety: a ring of wiring, computer screens, and hard drives, at the center of which stood an industrial work table. That’s where the canvas sat, rather than an easel, facing straight up. A pair of hands entered the bottom of the frame, priming it in swift, professional strokes—the work of a trained painter. Then they disappeared, and the robot took over.

Straddling the upper half of the table, the apparatus looked like it had been grafted on, a cybernetic alteration of sorts. A thick metal bar ran lengthwise, holding on its end a complex, box-shaped device with colored tubes twisting out from the back. All of the hardware was secured to two rails on the table’s sides: between its horizontal and vertical mobility, the device appeared able to cover every inch of the surface. For now, though, it just needed to tend to the white rectangle in the lower left corner. 

From off-camera came a tapping noise—someone keying in a command. The digital printer whirred to life, heading for the corner one direction at a time: a bit down, a little to the left. Reaching its destination, it stopped with a jerk, then bore down on the canvas, preparing to lay down the first layer of my painting.

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In a Brooklyn warehouse space, not far from where the Hudson River empties into the Atlantic Ocean, there exists a robotic “printer”—a deceptive, nearly humble title for a machine that produces real paintings with uncanny mastery. Its current iteration consists of a mobile printer head mounted to a metal bar, equipped with 200 nozzles in place of a brush, and wired to a handful of design softwares. Through that connection, the printer receives instructions; unlike parallel innovations in writing, for instance, it does not generate work on its own. To begin painting—a process during which the printer head never makes physical contact with the canvas—it needs a base image. To date, artists have used the device to make entire paintings they might not have attempted on their own, or to provide specific augmentations to semi-complete works. The printer’s intelligence is not artificial, but rather “extended,” to use the term preferred by the machine’s creator, Ben Tritt.