Slashdot Mirror
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
Hektor really needs to learn some can control. Look at that drip!
He also lacks style, but at least it's not just giant bubble letters.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
Simple, elegant and with the right planning and execution some pretty decent murals could be done. I think there's a real market for it, even for commercial advertising. Give something like this more colors and even graphitti artists will begin to wonder why they put up with the freezing cold, cops, etc. when they could just hook up one of these and lurk in the shadows until it's done. No more lugging around twenty cans of spraypaint.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
A variation of an XY plotter, hanging from cables, gravity pulls it in the Y direction.
A friend and I did something practically identical years ago for a tech shop project in high school, though we werent allowed to use spraypaint, so we had it draw on walls with magic markers, like a giant hanging etch-a-sketch. Worked pretty well, and really wasnt that complicated to build (QBasic "driver" software included)
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I think this story is a dupe. Didn't they send two of these to Mars?
litigious bastards
suck it sco!
Where's the art? I'm sure that there are lots of people who would argue that graffiti is not art, but I feel that it's a valid form of subversive social commentary.
Most of the Graffiti kids I have known tag for a bunch of reasons..
Reasons like the art of it (I've seen some fantastic tags), but mostly the challenge of getting to a spot where you have time to throw a good tag. I mean, half of what people graffiti is their own name, or TAG, mostly on the biggest, most difficult thing to get to that they can find.
It's about the art, and about the challenge. Using a robot seems like mere automated vandalism.
This just makes me wonder why similar technology hasn't been used for the giant advertisements that cover the entire side of buildings. From what I've seen, these are all done by living human artists, who do a remarkable job in most cases. But it would seem very realistic, and I'd think cheaper to use some kind of robotic painter that could replicate art on anything. Have I just missed the news, or is it Clear Channel holding back the progress of technology?
Here's the old post.
My other sig is a Porsche.
As if those no-talent taggers aren't enough, now we can look forward to them automating the process.
Proof-positive tagging isn't art.
*puts on flame retardant underpants*
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
We already have robots that make bad art. They're called "network executives".
Best Windows Freeware
A direct link to a 15MB .mov file on the front page of slashdot? Does someone REALLY not like the people who run that server or something?
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!)
Yeah, a nice bit of javascript that opens over a half dozen windows in rapid-fire order, ordered a CD from Amazon using my account, sent a flaming email to GWB, redirected me to the goat-whatever guy, played the Dean Scream, and then crashed Mozilla. Well, ok, only the bit about opening up a bunch of photos.
[RANT]Folks- popup windoid things as part of your website are like talking appliances. Every so often, designers get it in their heads that it's a Hot Idea, and then everyone drags them out into the street and demonstrates how the current generation of designers got their new jobs. If I want to open something on your site in a new window, I'll goddamn hold down the modifier key and THEN click the link, thanks much.[/RANT]
Please help metamoderate.
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