Meet the Canadian artist who paints with robots

Bangkok Post Group

Art meets artificial intelligence in the artworks of Sougwen Chung, whose collaborations with robotic painters can sell for tens of thousands of pounds. - REUTERS

Transcript

00:00 Rapidly emerging technology under the umbrella term AI seems to be changing a number of fields

00:07 from transportation to brain surgery.

00:10 Proponents say it could make our lives safer or more efficient.

00:13 But what about the arts, where working faster or better isn't always the point, and where

00:18 an artist's greatest asset is often their uniquely human touch?

00:22 Artist and researcher Song Wen-chung believes that there is room for innovation in this

00:26 studio as well.

00:28 She says she's pushing the boundaries of creative work alongside AI.

00:36 I've worked with computer vision and public cameras to think about ways drawing can expand

00:45 and how the mark made by hand can shape and be shaped by the mark made by machine.

00:52 Chung was born in Hong Kong and brought up in Toronto by an opera singing father and

00:56 a mother who programmed computers.

00:59 Now she collaborates with a variety of painting robots, sometimes in front of live audiences.

01:06 The artwork they create together can sell for as much as tens of thousands of pounds.

01:10 The machines are named Dug, drawing operations unit generation.

01:15 They study the artist's hand-drawn gestures and synchronously draw along.

01:20 What I love about the project is it's not really one of control or repetition or sequencing.

01:26 There is an overhead camera in the work that reads my gestures in space when I'm making

01:33 the work.

01:34 There's a neural network that drives, in one of the generations, there's a neural network

01:38 that's trained on two decades of my own drawing data that responds to the mark I make on the

01:45 canvas.

01:46 It really creates an embodied linkage between myself and the robotic system that isn't pre-sequenced,

01:52 that isn't sort of pre-controlled.

01:55 And I think in that way, we're able, the system, the robotic units, myself, are able to respond

02:02 in order to make an image.

02:03 So I like to think of it as a kind of embodied AI system that reads myself in the space as

02:13 one of the prime collaborators.

02:16 By taking robotic arms, typically associated with manufacturing of cars or microchips,

02:21 and repurposing them in a creative space, Chung says she aims to challenge people's

02:26 ideas about the limits of robotics and AI.

02:30 Obviously the arm is quite interesting as I think it has a presence in culture as an

02:38 icon of industrial automation.

02:41 And I'm repurposing that iconography in a way, that motif for being a presence that

02:49 is collaborative and improvisational and meant for making artworks.

02:53 Chung is regarded as a pioneer of human and machine collaboration and has been showcased

02:58 around the world.

03:00 She was named as one of the 100 most influential people in AI on the inaugural Time 100 AI

03:06 list for 2023 under the innovator category.

03:10 [END]

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