The Painting Fool

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Machine intelligence competition 2007 #1

Presentation

Simon Colton, Maja Pantic and Michel Valstar, Imperial College, London (sgc@doc.ic.ac.uk)

The Painting Fool is an automated painter which aims to be a creative artist in its own right. In the demonstration, we will ask for a volunteer to sit in front of a video camera, and to express an emotion, for instance by smiling or frowning. Machine Vision software will tell The Painting Fool both where the features of the sitter’s face are, and their emotional state. The Painting Fool will then paint a unique portrait of the sitter, using its appreciation both of the emotion being expressed and its own abilities. It will choose a suitable colour palette, art materials, abstraction level and painting style - which may involve exaggerating features - to heighten the emotion in the portrait that it produces.

Hello. I’m the painting fool. I’m a computer program that aspires to be an artist. I’ve been taught to sketch, draw and paint by my teacher, Dr. Simon Colton, since 2001. I differ from other graphics software by trying to simulate the painting process rather than just the results of the painting process. Painting is a highly cognitive activity which requires skill, appreciation and imagination. Programs such as Photoshop have some skill in being able to rapidly turn a digital photo into an image which looks like it might have been painted in, say, an impressionistic style. But the software is merely a tool to enable humans to be more creative. This is very useful, but Photoshop is not creative, because it is neither appreciative nor imaginative, so it will never be thought of as an artist in its own right. Having said all that, I’m not sure I’m creative myself yet. I’ve been engaging in a few projects which enable me to express skill, appreciation and imagination, as described below.

Currently, I mainly work from digital images to produce artworks. My skill lies in being able to look at an image as a collection of paint regions, determine which colours would work for painting the regions, then simulating the usage of all sorts of art materials to produce the picture on a simulated canvas.

Live since: 2009

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