Tom has been
working on art making robots for eighteen years
Goal:
Artificial Creation
Using Computers for Intelligent Tasks
Primer:
A Russian farmer who
while walking through his fields one day noticed some newspapers outside
a raccoon’s den. At a distance he intently watched and soon the raccoon
came out and went through the papers looking for something to read. The
farmer did the right thing. He shot that raccoon.
History:
Work
started in 1980 using a Radio Shack Color Computer to address individual
pixels, creating computer art. Later Tom purchased a stepper motor
controller using the Radio Shack Color Computer in 1989 and created a
metering and dispensing oil paint device using screw driven plungers.
Tom’s simplest painting
device was a palette he screwed four oil paint tubes into the base and
squeezed out the paint, as he needed it. Tom used the simple palette for
three years as he studied color mixing. A derivative of this was adapted
caulking gun where the plunger drove angled treaded rods that squeezed
out various quantities of oil paint determined by the angle created.
Following this device, Tom developed an air pressure palette where oil
paint was dispensed according to various air pressure applied to oil paint
in syringes. Tom used this painting device during his painting of Voyager
II while a reporter at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory during Voyager II’s
encounter with Uranus. Next, Tom started to create small windup devices
that made strokes on paper with watercolor dispensed through a brush from
a syringe. He elaborated on this idea by adapting a remote controlled
car into a painting robot. Tom laid off small robot art machines for a
year because they started to seem menacing. He created three man powered
art machines, a pushcart, flying bicycle and a sculpture making exercise
machine. It was not until Tom was confronted with the impossible belief
that the brush and paint could not be the ultimate painting device, he
set afresh, by purchasing a Lego robotic system and quickly prototyped
three robot printers. One was a large format pastel printer that followed
a same size paper plate suspended above the robot as it copied the plate
below it in pastel. The second printer used a pantograph system to follow
a smaller size plate. This system an advanced method of applying color.
This allows quick application instead of the laborious going over that
occurred with the pastel. The third system is a computer controlled
printer where one of eight colors are choosen to be appiled to 4161 spots
on a 16" X 20" canvas. On the drawing table is using state-of-the-art
IMAQ vision software provided as part of RoboLab, the graphic programming
interface that drives the Lego motors and sensors. This is the same
software used by NASA in its Sojourner, Pathfinder mission to Mars in
July of 1996. The upper level vision commands are included in the simpler
RoboLab version. It is the same vision software used to analyze medical
images and automatic industrial assembly. What will be needed is to take
advantage of the four ways to analysis images, frequency & spatial
filtering, quantitative, morphology, and pattern matching.
It was a strange series
of events that lead Tom to the epiphany of using advance science to further
Art. He was befriended by an en plein artist out of Portsmouth England
and spent four days with him painting out side in Portsmouth in January
of 2002. Having spent six years painting outdoors earlier in his career
he tried to get back into the swing of things. What stuck in his crawl
was that painting with brushes on canvas could not be the end all of human
creation. It was then that he realized that oil painting must have seemed
revolutionary when it was invented and it was advanced science at that
time. Tom decided then to concentrate on his own science art ideas and
continue to paint extremely refined oil portraits in the old academic
manner.
New Ideas
Web Art
A computer program that will mine
the Internet and deliver art.
Face Recognition
Art Creating A Human Profile From a Formula
Click
to see the timeline on using the tobacco gene map to paint on the leaves
surface.
Humidfier
Painting,
5'
6" x 4', Waterproof paint on concrete board, copper tubing, K
gutter, water pump, January 15th, 2002
Inspiring Smiles
Forever
Experience The Warm Feeling
of Owning Original Art
Click
To learn how Tom supplies materials and guidance for you or your children
to paint.
