I/O Electronic Brush for Painting

karvind writes "BBC is running an interesting story about the I/O Brush developed by Kimiko Ryokai, researcher at the MIT Media Labs. The device allows a person to pick up colours and textures from their environment and paint with them on a large digital screen. At the tip of the brush is a tiny video camera enclosed by a ring-shaped brush. LEDs are used for illumination, and pressure sensors to trigger image capture. The camera captures one frame in the normal mode, and a few seconds of video in movie mode. The brush "paints" the captured image or movie onto a back-projected touch screen."

Comments

So

[Descalzo]

Did I muss it? How much would something like this cost? Sounds too expensive to be widely used. Still, it looks very fun.

Re:So

[aurb]

Here's your free I/O Brush: use a webcam to grab the pattern and paint it using mouse. The result will be somewhat similar, though it will not be all that fun.

Re:So

[mikael]

A 60" rear projected digital whiteboard would cost around 5000 pounds, and a wireless webcam would cost around 100 pounds.

Re:So

[Farmer Tim]

If basic CCDs can be put in cheap optical mice, there's no reason something with perhaps a few hundred/thousand pixels wouldn't be possible at a price comparable to a small graphics tablet.

I'd say the esoteric nature of the device would be a greater hinderance than cost; the limited number of replies to this article will give you a rough idea of how many people will want one of these. But I think those who will want one will really, really want one.

Too bad it's just a toy

[Hannah E. Davis]

It looks like an interesting toy, but I don't know how useful it would be to make actual works of art. From what I can see in the pictures, it looks too big and awkward to do any detail work. It's too bad, really, because a much smaller, stylus-sized version of this would be a lot of fun for image manipulation and digital art. It would be a lot easier to get colours right when painting from life anyway :)

Re:Too bad it's just a toy

[logicnazi]

Well prototype/research versions often need to be much larger than a mass market product as you have to combine general components rather than creating an integrated version through dedicated manufacturing/lithography.

In any case while it does sound like lots of fun, and it could be great for doing studies of real objects (copy the color directly) I don't know (I'm genuienly unsure) if it would really be better at color picking in general. I mean are you really able to find color alot better in the real world than by looking at swatches on the computer (perhaps you are I'm curious).

Re:Too bad it's just a toy

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be a lot easier to get colours right when painting from life anyway

My view is that painting is making a 'representation' of life (or something else) so the artist might not want the colors to be the same, which is not to say you're wrong. Maybe they could add the ability to blend colors/patterns in interesting ways. Being able to touch and trigger an animation seems cool. I wonder if any of the kids used the screen itself as a source, maybe to combine two different animations (in or out of synch)? Triggers a lot of ideas. Very interesting start.

Re:Too bad it's just a toy

[vmcto]

Geesh... You sound like me CEO...

"Well, yes it's a data warehouse that allows real-time analysis of anomolous event activity over the last 30 days, but where are the graphs?"

You gotta start somewhere...

Re:Too bad it's just a toy

[tinpan]

"I don't know how useful it would be to make actual works of art"
That depends on how good you are at working "outside of the box." I've heard great music created with professional instruments, toy instruments and even computers. I've examined awesome sculpture made with marble and some made with Playdoh. I've even seen great paintings made with condiments. Artists are pretty good at figuring out how to use tools to express themselves in a meaningful ways.

"...it looks too big and awkward to do any detail work."
The level of detail you could do with this thing is orders of magnitude beyond traditional brushes. Did you know that many computer art programs can zoom down to a pixel? And dig this: They also let you assign your granularity in something called dpi. Imagine a single brush that could be adjusted from an angstrom thick to a kilometer wide. Cool, eh?

"It would be a lot easier to get colours right when painting from life anyway"
Yeah, too bad there's not a way to calibrate monitors. And we know that the aim of all painters is to create photographic realism in every detail, even when it interferes with the perceptive and emotional realism.

Re:Too bad it's just a toy

[Taladar]

I think it would be nice to have for materials in 3D modeling, not just the color but reflection, transparency and texture could be captured too.

Re:Too bad it's just a toy

[pipingguy]

Comments like this:

The level of detail you could do with this thing is orders of magnitude beyond traditional brushes. Did you know that many computer art programs can zoom down to a pixel? And dig this: They also let you assign your granularity in something called dpi. Imagine a single brush that could be adjusted from an angstrom thick to a kilometer wide. Cool, eh?

indicate an obsession with perfection. That's not what art is about. If you are fascinated with angstrom-thick brushstrokes you are likely missing the forest due to the bark texture on the trees.

Re:Too bad it's just a toy

[JulesLt]

And how big was the first trackball?

Re:Too bad it's just a toy

[tinpan]

Uh... I was pointing out how even the abilities of the new tool are misunderstood and it could be used for detail work.

I understand that I tend to explain things with enthusiasm -- It seems to help people pay attention -- But that's no reason for you to jump to conclusions about the nature of my artistic obsessions. At least most people wait until the showing to do that.

And surely you aren't dismissing obsession with perfection in a general sweep. Sometimes the whole performance can be the expression on a single note from the violinist. Sometimes the forrest can be the bark on a single tree.

Science/Children's Meuseum Exhibit

[El Royo]

This seems like a fantastic installation for an interactive meuseum. Or, make a USB version and we can set it up on the PC and let Junior go nuts. It'd also do well on consoles, I think. Hmm, this might have more application than I first thought!

I imagine with a little craftwork, a cheap USB camera and a little FOSS you could make one of these yourself.

Re:Science/Children's Meuseum Exhibit

[fbjon]

And I imagine that with a lot of craftwork, a cheap USB camera with abysmal quality, and a lot of fuss you could make one of these yourself.

Carmack

[taskforce]

This could be very useful for what John Carmack said he would like to see more of in his speeech: less repeating textures in games (which he described as a "basic form of compression") and more single textures. After capturing the models using some sort of scanner a Deep-Paint like system (as opposed to traditional UVW map or texture repeaters) could be used in conjunction with the brush to give it texture... and you have a high quality copy of the object from the real world as a textured 3d model.

Re:Carmack

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that it isn't as easy as just wiping a scanner over an object to create a texture; this technique is orthogonal to the issue of whether or not you repeat textures. Since lighting calculations need to be performed on an object after texturing, while real world objects are already lit, it takes a fair amount of work to create a texture that's appropriate for use in a game or other rendering application. It's more likely that you would create such a "single texture" by rendering a 3D model in something like Renderman, and then using it to generate the skin (rather wasteful, what with all the complexities of fitting a complex object's polygons into a single rectangular texture, but hey, if that's state of the art...).

For example, if you need to use a flash to illuminate a texture, it generally creates a specular highlight that needs to be removed in postprocessing. Even with fairly flat lighting, you still have problems with self-shadowing (like on a brick wall).

These problems make it impractical to simply use a 'scanning brush' to import textures, unless the computer system is so advanced it can also automatically correct for lighting (not likely, since it's never obvious what's lighting and what's part of the underlying texture, which means you're going to need AI and an artist's eye).

This system would be perfectly appropriate to creating a single model of an object from a single perspective under a single set of lighting conditions, but so is a photograph.

I think the way it's described now is about as good as such a system can get (as a sort of palette). It certainly sounds like a useful artistic tool, unlike most crap that comes out of the Media Lab, and after some refinement I could see a company like Wacom selling these things.

It looks like

[xquark]

either an oversize painting brush or a normal sized
toilet brush, I'm still deciding.... :)

Arash

Re:It looks like

[LiquidCoooled]

I suppose it would be good for astronauts to get their own back on the Space toilet

(For those not in the know, it includes a upward facing camera and monitor for aiming)

Slavish replication of physical tools

[logicnazi]

I have to say I really like the idea and think it's great. However, making an object a paint brush seems to be just an unimaginative copy of the tool for the physical world. It would seem to me that the brush interface would just be silly at best and interfere with usage at worst.

Sure if the idea of this brush is to sell it to artists or other adults mimicking an interface they are comfortable with might be best. However, this is a limitation of adults they project onto children thinking of them like limited innocent versions of adults. Children are exceptionally good at learning new interfaces and ways of controlling things and it is probably a good experience for them as well.

It just seems kinda silly to me that we repeat this same silly duplication of old interfaces each time. When cars were first invented people tried to put reigns on them along with many other examples I can't remember. I'm just surprised we haven't learned yet that new technologies generally demand new interfaces...then again since it usually takes a generation to become familiar with the new interfaces it may be too much to hope that the designers would ever see this.

(Note this isn't a real criticism just a general observation and nit picking)

Re:Slavish replication of physical tools

[BrynM]

making an object a paint brush seems to be just an unimaginative copy of the tool for the physical world

I realize that you may be saying that this is more convergence than invention, but I think a brush metaphor does best illustrate what this thing does. Despite the label, what it does to computing and kids is interesting. If you can call a wand a wang, you can call a brush a wand.

It just seems kinda silly to me that we repeat this same silly duplication of old interfaces each time. When cars were first invented people tried to put reigns on them along with many other examples I can't remember. I'm just surprised we haven't learned yet that new technologies generally demand new interfaces...

Cars weren't a whizbang!-Suddenly-you-have-a-BMW! type thing. You're forgetting that the interface for a car took a long time to settle (especially by today's standards). In fact, it's still evolving quite a bit. Remember saying:

Children are exceptionally good at learning new interfaces and ways of controlling things

I think this may be a good reason to give it to kids right away. Think of it as interface R&D if you have to.

(Note this isn't a real criticism just a general observation and nit picking)

Ditto ;)

Re:Slavish replication of physical tools

[logicnazi]

Yes, I agree that if your goal is to make adults feel immediatly comfortable with something and quickly understand what it is good for a brush metaphor is best. However, it is a different thing to say that a metaphor communicates what something does and what it is good for/how to use it. The brush metaphore doesn't communicate what this device does; it would be a bad idea to try to paint your wall with this or dip it in real paint. You still have to explain what the device does explicitly as slashdot did in the story description (though not necessarily as technically). Just as with the computer desktop or any other control metaphor the point is to give people familiar with the old technology an immediate idea what this device is good for and how they should relate to it.

I agree that it takes a long time to develop a good interface (though I think the basic car interface: steering wheel, gas, break is essentially fixed and will only change again when people no longer manually control the car). However, I think this process is only prolonged by developers telling people how they should think of and relate to a device by using a metaphor of some existing technology. Children are certainly more immune to this implied instruction about what you should and shouldn't use this technology for but I don't know if they are completely.

I mean if your goal was to do UI research and figure out how people used the device the last thing you would want to do is prejudge the issue for them by packaging it just like some other technology.

Still, I suppose it is probably a necessery evil to get funding and potentially have the technology picked up by other adults. Trying to explain you made a stick with a camera in it is probably not going to get you anywhere near the immediate understanding of the benefits of your project as making it a paint brush will. Still, even if it isn't the case here I definatly think adults often impede children by supposing they need the same sort of familiar clues adults do.

Re:Slavish replication of physical tools

[Anonymous Coward]

(Note this isn't a real criticism just a general observation and nit picking)

And that's the problem with your post. Nowhere in it do you actually state what is wrong with the brush metaphor in this case. I think it's very natural, and apparently many other people do as well. Just coming up with lame examples of past technologies where the previous technological metaphors were copied with less than stunning success is pointless unless you can give some reason why the same would apply in this case.

-1, Troll.

Re:Slavish replication of physical tools

[ramblin billy]

Consider another explanation. Pretend the folks who developed the brush worked at the MIT Media Lab. Pretend that they had spent a lot of time thinking about the whole "brush thing". They do a lot of thinking up there - kinda famous for it. If they DID have good reasons for the design, instead of just being "silly", then surely they would have published some sort of academic paper. Them being at MIT and all. They could be very highly accomplished people who have worked on other projects like this one. Could even be in a museum. Or on the Discovery Channel Website. Pretending that all those things were true, wouldn't it also be true that the brush was probably not an "unimaginative copy "which was "silly at best", probably not a "necessery evil to get funding and potentially have the technology picked up by other adults" and not really designed to "make the kids feel at ease" after all. Consider that someone describing the project in those terms either didn't try to or was incapable of understanding the project. Consider that publicly suggesting that they half-assed their interface, compromised for monetary and political reasons, and wound up with something that is little more than a toy is both rude, stupid and illustrates a complete lack of understanding.

This project, particularly the way it addresses sensory/cognitive synthesis has implications in many fields - not the least of which are child development, digital art, interface design, artificial intelligence and the study of how physical reality and abstract thought interact. It also makes REALLY cool pictures. Take a look at one of the videos (at the bottom) and all will become clear. And don't worry about us adults impeding the children's progress - they're already way ahead of us.

"(Note this isn't a real criticism just a general observation and nit picking)"

billy - "what do expect on /." my ass

Re:Slavish replication of physical tools

[Eevee]

or dip it in real paint.

But this is why the metaphor works. You do dip the brush in paint...only the paint isn't that wet stuff that you get out of cans or tubes, but rather everything in the world. You like the shade of blue on someone's shirt? With this brush, the shirt is now a can of paint in exactly the color you want; one dip and you're got that color without any hassle. No searching for the right tube of paint, no mixing in a bit of white to lighten or black to darken; just what you want.

Re:Slavish replication of physical tools

[logicnazi]

And if you had read the comment instead of just being offended you might have noticed that I do think the project is a good idea created by smart people. I merely think the interface is silly.

Had you cared to even briefly consider my comment you might have noticed that my point is exactly that many intelligent and innovative inventors nevertheless assume new technology will be interacted with in the same was as old technology.

Perhaps had you been interested in responding intelligently instead of just being an ass you would have made sure the academic paper you linked made substantive comments refuting what I said. Yes they provide a good argument that the contact surface should be soft rather than hard like a light pen and I agree. However the only thing even resembeling an argument as to why this means it should *look* or *feel* like a brush is that a brush was that a brush was one of the few (perhaps only) existing tools which we let touch our bodies.

Now perhaps had you cared to think about my argument it would have occured to you that this actually supports my position. Namely that rather than an analysis of what kind of new interface might be appropriate they assume that they must pick from already existing interfaces. Of course I could be wrong and they may have considered this issue and have compelling arguments against it. However, if you are going to be an ass and arrogantly critisize someone for ignoring evidence you ought to at least first make sure you understand what they are saying and aren't posting evidence that supports their position.

I mean couldn't you at least take the 5 minutes to figure out what someone is saying, especially when they make specific disclaimers telling you they aren't disparaging the overall project, before making a nasty response?

Re:Slavish replication of physical tools

[logicnazi]

Perhaps I wasn't clear on this point. I agree completely that the metaphor works and is probably the best metaphor possible. My point is that for fairly simple (in function not necessarily technology) tools/interfaces a metaphor is merely a way to make adult users of the old technology familiar with the new. Hence my comment that if their goal was mass market adoption or even immediate understanding by adults of the function/usefullness of the item this is the right way to design something. If, on the other hand, their goal is to create new ways and ideas for interacting with technology a metaphor like this merely inhibits the types of applications people think to use the technology with.

I mean the situation really is alot similar to putting reins on early cars. It was a great metaphor. It communicated perfectly to users what this interface was meant to accomplish, namely it steered your means of transportation. However, a car is not a horse and a I/O brush is not a brush and what is the best interface for one is not necessarily the best for the other.

Re:Slavish replication of physical tools

[ramblin billy]

Dude, you missed it again. Not only do they explain exactly why they use the form of a brush, they list and discuss other possible interfaces. They give examples of other approaches to human interaction with new technologies. They also explain their desire to recreate the link between colors on the 'canvas' and everyday life that painters experienced when making the various colors of paint with physical ingredients. Just as a painter picks up paint with a brush, the IO Brush picks up attributes from the environment. In the same way the paint brush allows for varied techniques when applying the paint to the canvas, the IO Brush allows various techniques to be used when applying the captured attributes. The act of 'picking it up' and 'painting it on' is the entire focus of the project. Go back and read the paper again. In one paragraph you adamantly state that "the only thing even resembling an argument as to why this means it should *look* or *feel* like a brush is that a brush was was one of the few (perhaps only) existing tools which we let touch our bodies." RTFP and you will see that this statement is factually incorrect. In fact, your entire rebuttal is as devoid of validity as your first post. You accuse me of not taking the time to understand your argument. You HAD NO ARGUMENT! Your premises were based on opinions you formed with a cursory examination of the project. You didn't understand the projects purpose, the underlying conceptual framework or the implementation of the technology. You still don't. Yet you felt it appropriate to post a criticism on a public forum. Read the title of your first post, "Slavish replication of physical tools", you know, the one where you use the words "silly" and "unimaginative" and suggest that "it may be too much to hope that the designers would ever see" that new technologies might require new interfaces. Oh please, go ahead and hope. That's exactly the specialty of this group of designers. The group you were dissing. If you're gonna post lame ass attacks that have no basis in an honest attempt to understand your subject, you better get used to the possibility that you might get called out. At least if I'm in the mood. If you think my response, including quotes from you and multiple supporting links, was "briefly considered" because I disagree with you, you're wrong. I responded because, in this particular instance, you're clueless but still felt the need to insult people who are not. There's way too much of that shit in the world today.

billy - hey, look on the bright side...at least you are living up to your nick .

Didn't i see this in '99 on tv?

[plasmacutter]

I remember shows like "beyond 2000" back when discovery channel wasn't the storm channel (or maybe it moved on to something even worse than storms now?)

It was interesting then.. but slashdotted in sept 2005?

Re:Didn't i see this in '99 on tv?

[Anonymous Coward]

i miss that discovery....

Re:Didn't i see this in '99 on tv?

[BrynM]

when discovery channel wasn't the storm channel

For some reason, Sharks riding choppers through storms week sounds interesting... Too much PBS on acid as a teen I guess.

Re:Didn't i see this in '99 on tv?

[SheeEttin]

Must be the longest dupe in the history of Slashdot...

Re:Didn't i see this in '99 on tv?

[Savantissimo]

In the early days it was the whitewater kayaking channel. I'm still waiting for that to come back. "Our team will attempt to navigate the Sun Coozi river in the wilds of Nepal... the last four kayakers to try this river died..." You just don't get that kind of insanity anymore.

High-Tech or Dump

[Cash202]

This appears to be one of two things:

1) Revolutionary way to develop creativity, artistic design, and low level education to children. Would replace wasteful and hectic coloring books, child artbooks, and maybe open gate to accept fully digital books. A world of application.

-or-

2) Another technological development overlooked and not cared for, ending up with countless other technological developments. Though some of which were brought back after years in the garbage pile, when widely or purposeful applicable use appears. However, most remain there, which it seems this would be the destiny of this particular gadget.

Re:High-Tech or Dump

[krymsin01]

I can see most of the points in #1, but why would it open the gate to accepting digital books?

Re:High-Tech or Dump

[Anonymous Coward]

I vote for #2 and wonder how much money was wasted on this thing.

Re:High-Tech or Dump

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh great, get rid of coloring books and replace them with fully digital books? Are you a complete dunce? Must everything a person does revolve around computing?

That's so 2004

[MSch]

That thing was featured in the Austrian Ars Electronica Festival from 2004.

More information about the Brush from this website

Re:That's so 2004

[horror_vacui]

I work at the Ars Electronica Center and I can confirm that it's not really news, the I/O brush having been exposed there for a rather long time.

Like most exhibits in the AEC, the I/O brush is not meant to be useful in the praxis, but rather to show new ways of interaction that new technologies offer - like 'moonies', a project where you can chase butterflies projected on a screen of vapour, or 'scrapple', a kind of reversal of virtual reality (which is basically a music sampler, only you create music not by editing the track on the screen, but by putting real objects of various shapes on a grid projected on a table). And lots of others, which are along the same lines - 'conspiratio', 'music box' etc. See for yourself on http://www.aec.at/en/festival2005/programm/allproj ects.asp

It seems like especially kids love the I/O brush, resulting in high amounts of tear and wear on the hardware.

Similar to using a pda with an art package

[blackest_k]

I use a Pda Phone with a Paint package to achieve a similar effect.

The phone has a camera built in so I can take a shot of where I am
Load this a background layer and then proceed to draw on a new layer
with the stylus on the touch screen.

Its a very natural way to draw. The alternatives such as a mouse or tablet
simply dont give the direct feedback drawing on a touch screen does.

the pda is pocket sized so makes drawing anywhere simple and discrete along with a battery life that will allow you to sit for hours drawing, its a great tool for anyone who likes to draw.

Re:Similar to using a pda with an art package

[ashot]

no thats not similar, you aren't paiting with the image that you captured.

Re:Similar to using a pda with an art package

[blackest_k]

you can use a captured image as a brush, or just pick colors
from the image.

I don't know if there is a way to average out a color
from a group of pixels and the package I use doesnt
record a pixels source.

I do like the idea of recording sound and video and
maintaining the link between the source and the final
picture.

Thats purely a question of using a package which works
in this way.

What could be interesting to see developed is something like
MIDI for artists. ie a live recording of the picture being
created starting from a blank canvas to the final image.

now that could be an innovative and viable product.
don't we all feel a sense of awe watching an artist produce
something bueatiful from nothing.

The ability to go back to a point in a pictures creation
and decide to do it differently from that point on or cut
and paste on the timeline so if theres a 'bad' section it
can be edited out the sequence or perhaps moving
of a section of the original by an offset of a few pixels or use a
different brush or colour.

Wouldn't this be a great and innovative open source project.
the file format would have to be something similar to midi and open
so anybody could make a player or editor.

Re:Similar to using a pda with an art package

[Shoreline]

Seems like the idea is to use colors we actually see, rather than an imagined version of them, while not having a photo image override one's own artistic sense of all the rest, the effects of proportion, perspective, near and distant lighting, etc. Painters show us that our experience of color is deeply affected by context. I wonder how these raw environmental color-captures feel if washed into original drawings without the nuanced tone adjustment called for by these other factors, though adjustments might diminish the direct reality of the colors after all. Course, who's to say that any adjustments are really called for? Some disjunctures might seem more artificial than near-miss choices from the computer's array of hues, and yet the effect still interesting anyway

Similar Art installation

[Jeffv323]

Can anybody remember an art installation that was a similar idea? It involved a paintbrush with a CCD camera built in that would effectively paint any surface onto a digital screen. It also incorporated live video of the artist as a source of ink.

I know the artist was big into digital installations like this, however I don't think it was implemented as effectively as the MIT brush.

Cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

So if you wanted:
perfect white - you'd put it on your mac : |
perfect blue color - your windows monitor :P
that elite blue led color, your linux case : D

How to make it interesting...

[moviepig.com]

Let the resulting work of art be fully annotated, swatch by swatch...

Airhead self-promoting jackasses do it again

[geordieboy]

Why did they embed the video camera inside a big load of brush bristles? To make the kids feel "at ease" with the device? I imagine someone is writing their thesis right now on how important the damn bristles are for making the kids feel at ease. Meanwhile, on the other side of the MIT campus, the grown ups are sequencing the rat genome.

How about a system that lets you paint by pissing on a pressure sensitive digital canvus. The saltier the piss the deeper the color. With virtual ammonia stench too! Wouldn't that be revolutionary, you media lab bastard.

Photoshop integration.

[Ministry of Cube]

I think a simple tool (not a brush) that could do this and import the texture into Photoshop would be neat. I don't mind using a mouse, but if one wanted they could use a WACOM tablet to get the same result. It would certainly be a lot cheaper than buying this huge fany-pants painting display.

Re:Photoshop integration.

[springbox]

It would be a neat thing to play around with, but if you want to do the same thing you can:
- Take a picture of something with a digital camera
- Import the picture into Photoshop (or the GIMP!)
- Cut out a shape in the center of the image
- Create a new brush with the shape

Not nearly as automated, but I guess it will give you the same results. You just need to sample everything you want to paint with beforehand.

Re:Photoshop integration.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, using photographs that are imported into photoshop is a common way for digital painters to work. By sampling colors from a picture (or pictures) you find beautiful you are essentially using a palate that you respond to. Generate a bunch of swatches from such an image and save them out... soon you'll have a library of color schemes that are drawn from 'nature' and will work rather well... Painting from these sampled hues/values is pretty intuitive.

Anyways, I think this brush with camera thing is pretty cool, but often you will want to have your palate composed -- at least in a basic way -- before you start painting. A scanned/imported photo is also useful as a reference for the range of color and value that inspired you to begin with.

Wacom tablets, BTW, could allow for this -- imagine if you could sample from a photograph or other flat art under the plastic slip. A specially designed stylus could have a color sampler on it -- maybe on the back side where the 'eraser' is or something...

Silly bristles!

[springbox]

Why did they embed the video camera inside a big load of brush bristles? To make the kids feel "at ease" with the device? I imagine someone is writing their thesis right now on how important the damn bristles are

You're funny!

But seriously, given the nature of the device, which is used for creating art, the gigantic paint brush seems like some sort of artistic expression in itself.

Daniel Rozin

[babymac]

Artist Daniel Rozin has already done something like this.

http://smoothware.com/danny/neweasel.html

You should also check out his other projects such as my personal favorite, Wooden Mirror.

...But I Wouldn't Want to Have to Paint it

[Doc Ruby]

I'd like to see them close the loop, and project the image not onto a touchscreen, but onto the things being painted. That would require another video camera to detect the position of the brush, or perhaps little radio positioners, and pretty bright projection. I'm sure there are a lot of other hitches, but making the world not only our palette, but also our canvas, is a really exciting challenge posed by the current king of the hill: paint.

weee

[jeffimix]

It looks like a big tube around a webcam, it's about the right size to hold the orb of my logitech quickcam anyhow (go spca5xx!)

Doesn't work that well

[floki]

I tried it out at the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria. It didn't work that well. You had to press the brush pretty hard against the object, the camera wasn't oriented correctly (probably from repeated misuse) and out of focus. I expected more from it but usage was rather tedious and not very intuitive.

Re:Doesn't work that well

[StefanMarti]

I am one of the inventors of I/O Brush, and I also set up the version at AEC. We had to simplify the brush at AEC to make it fool proof, and it was futher simplified during the last year. However, at MIT, we have a much more advanced version. The latest one has four pressure sensors (each 10 bit resolution) that measure the pressure from the bristles directly. This allows us not only to have a binary value (touching versus not touching), but on the canvas we also know how much pressure the user applied, and if the brush was tilted. We also added an inclinometer so that we always know where's up (the rotation of the brush). We added many more features that the AEC version unfortunately does not have. Just visit the Media Lab, there the most recent brush is set up--it works so much more better than the AEC version. Especially the inclinometer makes the brush much more expressive. We added also a different movie mode (I mean different from the AEC version), which creates fantastic brush strokes.

Re:Doesn't work that well

[floki]

Sorry for giving the brush a bad review. I will try out the version in the Media Lab, thanks for the hint.

well...

[NickCatal]

At least Blue Man Group has something to add into their show....

The artist

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, art happens on so many levels beyond simple image likeness these days that I'm sure many artists would love to have this for creating composite images out of surface treatments/ printouts/ etchouts/ whatever.