Swiss advertising & press photographer Daniel Boschung maps faces. But instead of snapping the images himself, he delegates the job to an industrial robot controlled by custom-programmed software. The resulting standardized portraits, with their hyper-realistic look and jumbo, 1.8 x 1.8-meter format, generate surprising power and have a disconcerting effect.

PLEN is an open source printable bipedal walking humanoid robot. Since all its constituent control circuits, software and mechanical designs are universally accessible, technicians and artists can use PLEN as a platform for their own diversifying development processes.
Visitors can attend workshops in which they develop their own vision of an evolvable robot and then, in various forms, bring these creative visions to life.

In a scene reminiscent of a drawing class, a human is sketched by 5 robots named Paul. Their bodies are old school desks on which the drawing paper is pinned. Their left arms, bolted on the desks, holding black biros, are only able to draw. The robots, stylised minimal obsessive artists, look alike except for their eyes, either obsolete digital cameras, or webcams. The sounds produced by the robot’s motors create an improvised soundtrack.

A short theatrical event

When the subject arrives he is invited to sit in an armchair, an assistant pins sheets of paper onto the robots and wakes each one up. The sitter only sees the robots actions alternating between observing and sketching. For the spectators the sitter is only one of the six actors in a short theatrical event. The drawing sessions last up to 40 minutes. During the exhibition day after day the drawings progressively cover the wall.

Robotic research

The software driving Paul is based on research into the cognitive-perceptual-motor processes involved when artists draw from life and is implemented by Tresset using research from robotics, computer vision and computational creativity. This work is based on Tresset’s doctoral research conducted at Goldsmiths’ Digital Studio, University of London.