Meet the Canadian artist who paints with robots
STORY: Rapidly emerging technology under the umbrella term 'AI' seems to be changing a number of fields, from transportation to brain surgery.
Proponents say it could make our lives safer or more efficient.
But what about the arts, where working "faster" or "better" isn't always the point?
And where an artists’ greatest asset is often their uniquely human touch?
Artist and researcher Sougwen Chung believes that there is room for innovation in the studio as well.
She says she's pushing the boundaries of creative work alongside AI.
[Sougwen Chung / Artist and researcher]
“I've worked with computer vision and public cameras to think about the ways drawing can expand and how the mark made by hand can shape and be shaped by the mark made by machine."
Chung was born in Hong Kong and brought up in Toronto by an opera singing father and a mother who programmed computers.
Now, she collaborates with a variety of painting robots, sometimes in front of live audiences.
The artwork they create together can sell for as much as tens of thousands of pounds.
The machines are named D.O.U.G - Drawing Operations Unit Generation.
They study the artist's hand-drawn gestures and synchronously draw along.
"What I love about the project is it's not really one of control or repetition or sequencing. There is an overhead camera in the work that reads my gestures in space when I'm making the work. There is a neural network that drives, in one of the generations there's a neural network, that's trained on two decades of my own drawing data that responds to the mark I make on the canvas. It really creates an embodied linkage between myself and the robotic system that isn't pre sequence, that isn't sort of pre controlled and I think in that way, we're able the system the robotic units myself are able to respond in order to make an image. So it's a I like to think of it as a kind of embodied AI system that reads myself in the space as one of the prime collaborators."
By taking robotic arms, typically associated with manufacturing of cars or microchips,
and repurposing them in a creative space, Chung says she aims to challenge people’s ideas about the limits of robotics and AI.
“Obviously the arm is quite interesting as I think it has a presence in culture as a icon of industrial automation, and I'm repurposing that iconography in a way, that motif, for being a presence that is collaborative and improvisational and meant for making artworks.”
Chung is regarded as a pioneer of human and machine collaboration, and has been showcased around the world.
She was named as one of the 100 Most Influential People in AI on the inaugural TIME100 AI list for 2023 under the 'Innovator' category.
