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Hektor: the Graffiti Robot
Lopex writes "Gizmodo has a story about Hektor, a graffiti robot. Apparently it is for the extremely geeky (or perhaps extremely lazy) tagger. Hektor.ch has photos, information (pdf), and a movie (15 Mb) of it in action."
Many moons ago (at least a couple of years I think) on the discovery channel, or similar. But they were showing it off as an abstract artist. I think the idea behind that is any monkey can construct a robot to "trace" a digital image. It would just be an oversized printer.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
er, demolition man, i mean.
Look over the pictures again. Any picture that shows drip will show plenty of areas with none. There are also other pictures with no drip at all.
Here's the old post.
My other sig is a Porsche.
I saw this yesterday on Gizmodo, and was tremendously impressed with not only the quality of workmanship, but also the terrific software design - these guys created a custom program to take input from Adobe Illustrator, and create paths upon which Hektor can travel easily. See Scriptographer.com for the plugin. Really tremendous product, and the results are amazing (check out the portrait of Che Guevara in the PDF!)
if you click on the jpg link... consider yourself warned
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Video available here
PDF available here
Even bigger building, just a longer rope
This would work up to a point, but it wouldn't scale well for big structures. Rope stretches, even static ropes not designed for climbing still stretch a little. The longer the rope gets the heavier it is so the more it stretches. Unless you account for this when working out the position of the sprayer your pictures are going to be distorted.
You might be able to solve it using steel cables instead of rope which would stop the stretching problem but you might have trouble with their stiffness.
Yeah, and to beat the wall-mounted zappers, they used robotic pods that popped out of the ground and spraypainted the whole wall in two seconds.
- http://pakman.sytes.net/
How about RTFpdf? The drips were actually painted, they're not drips at all. Although they did get drips on some of their testing, the big "drips" in that image were purely intentional.
I want one.
With graffiti writing you have to take 2 things into account:
c ht rue.com
1. What is the location of the writing? Is it an appropriate location (i.e. no personal property i.e. houses, small businesses; not on a cultural monument or other work of art; nature is another big no) Is the work appropriate for the location? (does it work off the environment around it to assimilate itself into the general experience of its location?)
2. What is the substance of the writing? Any 12 year old with a spraycan can write his name wierd, but it takes years of practice and dedication to achieve the skill level of some writers. Also, anyone can rip off someone else's style; is the work original?
If a piece of graffiti writing is appropriate for its environment and well excecuted, it can be a significant improvement over what previously occupied the space.
A good work of graffiti will be well excecuted and appropriate for its location.
Now we arrive at the question of legality. Much graffiti is done on or in abandoned buildings, alleyways, secluded rooftops, and on billboards. Many, if not most, of these spaces are essentially abandoned before graffiti writers come and mark their surfaces. In fact, graffiti is often done on top of other graffiti- there are legal walls with up to a 6 inch thick layer of paint on them.
Graffiti does not structurally harm buildings and can usually be painted over quickly and cheaply (glass etch tags are a very notable exception, it can cost thousands of dollars to replace a marred window pane and many writers decry the use of such wantonly destructive implements). It actually keeps plenty of kids out of gangs and drugs and provides an outlet for young peoples' creativity that isn't found elsewhere, and can be a very constructive and positive thing. On the other hand, graffiti can deface community murals and private homes (fortunately, this sort of writing is frowned upon).
Links:
www.greatbates.com
www.graffiti.org
www.dare.
www.12ozprophet.com
www.theartwheredreamscome
www.graphotism.com
www.nicekidnice.com