Project Ideas: Place

I would like to continue working with the UR5 for this project, stepping up the complexity of movements to create more natural, realistic form. I have begun to research, understand, and model the movement of the human hand and brush and its relationship to painting substrate in Chinese Calligraphy. For me, this represents the ultimate expressive form of intentional mark making (for mark making consisting of only a few strokes).

I intend for the explorations of generating expressive robotic form to influence the exploration of place. Some ideas include:

  • Giving life to an incredibly dull data set or turning an ugly / condemned data set into something astonishingly beautiful (tension of seen / unseen data)
  • Create real-time artifacts / records of travel. For example, have the robot paint the path I take over the course of a day. Alternatively, monitor microscopic water creatures (hydra, planaria, or daphnia) and replicate their movements with a brush.
  • Explore the liminal space between our perception of the machine and the robot. I’m currently awaiting to hear back from a hundred random turk workers around the globe to know what the public perceives as the different between these two entities.
  • Etc.