Slashdot Mirror
Robot Produces Paintings With That 'Imperfect' Human Look
kkleiner writes "An artistic robotic system named e-David has been developed that produces paintings that appear to be created by humans. Using an iterative process of brush strokes and image comparison, e-David's assembly line welder arm can paint in up to 24 colors and add shading where needed. The robot even cleans its five brushes along the way, according to University of Konstanz researchers who developed the system as an exercise in machine learning."
how it models imperfection so perfectly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Verse_(short_story)
Actually it's more efficient. By allowing the analog medium to introduce imperfections you don't have to.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
This lacks one vital component: Creativity
A painter may think "I may want to make that woman's eyes a bit more smiling", and then do so. Or think "If I add a stone fence between the buildings, it will look more severe".
Or even "the sky would look better with a green streak".
So while this might be a nice exercise in machine learning, don't insult its good workmanship by calling it art.
via the telegraph wire was invented over 150 years ago. It predates voice telephone calls. This machine adds nothing new with its plotter which was invented invented 50 years ago and was immediately hooked up to both wireless and wired transmission at the time.
BTW, the shadow of that tree is physically impossible (and no that doesn't make it "art".)
This "invention" is total phail.
I don't mean to take away form the robotics work or the research, but the headline appears to be jumping the gun. Most of the sample paintings look like GIMP filters or that machine at Chuck-E-Cheese that draws the kids' pictures while they wait.
I was expecting a flexible arm mimicking Monet's technique or something. At this point I'd be much happier with an elephant painting on my wall - it's more "human" than the robot's.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This is the sort of seemingly trivial machine learning achievement that will ultimately coalesce with other seemingly trivial achievements in the field to serve as the bulk of a future, human-level or above AI. Or so I think.
The question is: will we know it when we see it? If we ever do develop a truly sentient AI, will we even be able to prove it?
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Interesting, but it's still not that much different from a printer with an algorithm to imitate a painterly look. There is software (like Corel Painter) that can transform photos to look like they were painted using different mediums. I could load a photo, use an automated feature in Painter, and print it, and it would basically do the same thing as this robot.
Robot has a hobby
Builds Volkswagens by daylight
Paints people at night
Thank you for that information Angela Wilson! This has been truly enlightening! I will surely follow the path to glory that this lays out! In return, I have a wonderful investment opportunity for you too! I know some folks in Nigeria who need to perform a wire transfer of $500,000 over to the USA. Due to quirks in international law, they need someone stateside to put up a mere $5,000 in order for the transfer to take place. If you help them, they will split the $500,000 with you out of nothing but gratitude! That's right, you can make $250,000 right now for the low investment of only $5,000! I would do it myself, but I estimate that by following your incredible path to wealth, it will take me an entire three-days to make that much, at which point it will be too late! Act now!
Oh yah! One more thing! Don't forget to go fuck yourself!
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
It doesn't look any more natural than a host of 20 year old Photoshop effects.
That robot will be rejected from a Fine Arts academy, failing the entrance exam twice, and from disgust and despise will try to take over the world instead.
why not just eliminate the messy paints and introduce imperfections algorithmically
But that would completely ruin the potential application in crafting master forgeries.
Ezekiel 23:20
I actually went out and read/watched TFA (gasp!) What is created by this robot is aesthetically pleasing to me. My definition of art is: something that can invoke an emotional response. Some of the pictures invokes loneliness, or struggle. I would call it art.
This concept is nothing new - As a musician, I know that the majority of digital recording software supports adjustable rhythm "randomization" to "humanize" drumming, for example. You start with machine-perfect rhythm, then slide the knob down a tad to "Neil Peart," then near the bottom of the knob's travel you get "sloppy drunk John Bonham."
-- Ethanol-fueled
The irony is that while the robot has been perfecting the human look my wife has perfected that machine look. Her drawings look so real that people mistake them for photographs. She does edit out and add in but it comes out looking so real it is mistaken for reality.
I will not consider robots human-like until they eat paste.
Table-ized A.I.
Paid off the mortgage on their apartment?! Holy cow! That's great!
Sorry to see no mention in TFA regarding Harold Cohen's "Aaron" drawing program which has been doing this for decades: http://www.scinetphotos.com/aaron.html This appears to similar albeit with the addition of a plotter + penholder. The debate of "is it really art or not" gets replayed yet again ...
I was honestly thinking of all the restaurant chains with tchotchke items... They're very plastic, and even more so in the instances where they are photographs... having an actual painting on a canvas with real texture is much more appealing, even if it is mass produced. I have bought and created a few oil paintings over the years, and to be able to have/create an image then send it of to be "printed" is appealing.. even being able to maybe choose a style of rendering the painting would be cool. There's a lot of possibility here. (but think of the artists) doesn't mean that all artists will be replaced with these robots any more than they were replaced with cameras (a similar cry in the past), it's just a new medium.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
As a someone with a Masters of Fine Art in painting, I can tell you there is not a lot of interest relating to art.
First: "Our hypothesis is that painting ... can be seen as optimization processes in which color is manually distributed on a canvas until the painter is able to recognize the content" is off base
All the lines in all the work are all the same length and thickness. Almost no artist simple distributes color. Artist chose details and focus.In this case David is being helped because it is using composed photography to copy.
Second: Even if they could get close to copying human style, it is not that interesting precisely because it is following an algorithm. The idea "the machine might enable new techniques since labor plays no role any more" is pretty weak. Artists typical employ computers to do what a computer does well, not to imitate humans. It is quite possible someone will actually do precisely what the authors suggest and use the machines ability for work without rest. There are always artist who find ways to use tools in new ways or to use them to make commentary on the process. This puts the robot in the same league as a chainsaw for carving wood, or paint that drips down from a rope.
As someone who as worked with machine learning a bit, there is not a huge amount of interest here either.
All in all it was probably fun and interesting to work on, but not all the interesting to read about or watch.
Copying stroke for stroke is a different thing altogether. There is a whole industry for this. http://www.artsstudio.com/ Price ranges with quality. Genuine paintings done by hand go from $200 to somewhere around $10,000 to $15,000 I think. They are not priceless. There is something about human nature the values the original. The price of art is a pure economic ideal. It is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay for it, so you can't really argue that someone overpaid.
The high end copies entail using the same techniques and materials which can be quite laborious. Some material are hand made and recreation requires a lot of specialized knowledge practice. Working with the material also takes lots of skill and practice. Glazing techniques, etc take a long time are more that stroke copy. Even if the robot can make the exact marks, the materials will come from someone else,
So if the robot is very good a stroke for stroke copy it would be better than what the low end people are producing. However, making the material and some techniques are probably outside a stroke for stroke copy. So I estimate the value at $500.
Paid off the mortgage on their apartment?! Holy cow! That's great!
May I venture a guess that you're an American?
In most of the world, there's no requirement that you have to rent it for it to be called an apartment. You can own it, and indeed mortgage it.
And strictly speaking, this is the case in the US too - a condo is just one type of apartment. Although colloquial American word use tend to call all owned apartments condominiums, that's not strictly true. A condominium is only partly owned, while an apartment can be fully owned too, including the land, utilities and shared facilities.
This thing certainly won't replace art, but that doesn't mean it won't make life difficult for at least some artists.
The reason being is that there's a big difference between "art" and what most artists actually do to pay their bills, if they're lucky enough to actually be able to pay their bills without having a day job. For a very specific example, a lot of photographers pay the bills doing stuff like weddings and glamour shots. Art it really isn't, but it's something folks are actually willing to pay cash money for to keep the lights on.
For painters, this equivalent is basically portraits and wall filler for people who think, exactly as you have done, that a painting looks nicer. I would suggest that if a machine can make something that looks hand painted, especially if it can do it from a photo, it may eventually replace a lot of average painters. It's not there yet obviously, but given machine color mixing is a solved problem, I'd suggest that it would be far from impossible to make this into a commercial product. It may of course never be made into one because now that the researchers have done their thing they'll move onto the next thing(no one becomes an AI researcher to deal with all the bother of making actual marketable products).
Well, of course a condo is a type of apartment by the very meaning of the word, but you'd be hard pressed to find someone owning or renting a condo from calling it an apartment. Having an apartment has a pretty solid meaning over here, and a condo is higher on the scale of ownership so people will call them condos. It might be different elsewhere but not in the west.
DRAW X+RND(10),Y+RND(10)
Done.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I would think that most people are familiar with the word/statement/phrase.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
>>"Having an apartment has a pretty solid meaning over here"
Not according to the 8M+ people living in NYC. Lots of people own apartments. The vast majority are not condos (they are coops), and people just refer to them as apartments. You were trying to be snarky, but failed.
Holy quote cherry-picking! Why don't you finish reading the posts you reply to.
It might be different elsewhere but not in the west.