Benjamin Grosser: Interactive Robot Painting Machine

American artist Benjamin Grosser’s “Robot Painting Machine” is pretty self-explanatorily a mechanical system programmed to respond to certain input (in this case, the sound of its own process) in order to paint a canvas accordingly. During a “performance,” aural cues are captured by a microphone and subjected to fourier analysis to be broken down into useful data for the machine, which then integrates the information into a genetic algorithm that makes decisions about the painting process. Attune to even the most minute gestural details of the painting process, Mr. Grosser’s machine is comprised of a network of three computers managing a highly complicated central software. A fascinating video for fans of technology or art, especially when the “first-person” view of the painting action starts to kick in.