A Summary of My Work

What are the mechanical aspects of painting?
What do paintings I love have in common?
What do robots I love have in common?
Which gestures of a given robot are like painterly gestures?
What are a given robot’s painterly limitations?

I aim to understand painting and robotics at an empirical level. I chose the field of painting because it is tried and true— capable of expressing the full gamut between abstraction and realism. I chose robotics because it is new, and skewed by so much dystopic science fiction. I consider myself a Modernist, using the tools of the field to examine the field itself.

I do not build robots to paint for us but to paint with us. Some of their innate qualities— patience, sensory input without psychological bias, consistency, file-based memory systems— are very useful to an artistic practice. They lack the biochemistry for emotion, the well-spring of many painters, but they don't need it for motivation the way we do. We can only guess an artist's emotions anyway; execution and intent make better criteria. I hope to one day build a robot that can claim intentionality, but just like in my own painting practice, a mastery of the material comes first.

The vastness of approaching these two fields simultaneously is the reason I take a Modernist approach. Like Descartes a Modernist begins by trying to forget everything and build up a system of understanding based on empirical observation alone. Then like Kant they use the collective knowledge of their field to create a standard, upon which they can build future work. The Modernist artists I relate to are the Color Field painters, particularly Anne Truitt and Kenneth Noland. I admire the harmonious palettes, the uniformity of the applied paint, the humble geometry. They rely on the medium to create the beauty of their paintings, rather than the subject or wall text. But narrative and realism inspire joy in the viewer and there is no reason to exclude them once familiar with the medium and in control of the hand. The painters I aspire to next are the Hudson River School.

Nila, my first oil painting robot, is my collaborator. I supply the canvas and paint, while her code and mechanics (both motorized and kinetic) move the brush. The diversity of strokes and blends and layers is something I would be unlikely to achieve on my own in painting. She is categorically indifferent to her work, never held back by insecurity and never capable of personal satisfaction. I am satisfied with Nila’s mechanical construction but an update in code would grant her a bit more autonomy. She is physically devoted to the abstract but has the potential for more controlled color studies. My next goal, accurate representation, requires a new robot.

For more information on my research and exhibitions, please see: http://paintbot.blogspot.com

For further inquiries, please contact me at: laura.greig@gmail.com

Thank you for visiting.