Mathew Stein's PumaPaint

I recently spoke with Mathew Stein about his painting robot PumaPaint. Way back in 1998 he equipped a Puma robotic arm with a brush, aimed a web-cam at it, and then invited the internet to crowdsource paintings with it. And he did all this before even crowdsourcing was even a word. In the first two years of the project alone over 25,000 unique users created 500 paintings. The robot continued creating crowdsourced painting for about 10 years.

I asked Mathew if he realized how ahead of its time his PumaPaint Project was.  He laughed and said he had not realized it until the New York Times wrote an article about him.

Oddly enough though, Mathew Stein, does not seam to consider himself an artist, or even realize that his project was an interactive performance art piece. For him it was about the technology and interaction with people around the world. Successful exhibitions in today's art scene are all about audience interaction and experimentation with new media. Without even setting out to do so, Mathew Steins' PumaPaint achieved both on a global scale.  People from around the world were able to use the newly emerging internet to control a teleoperated robotic arm and paint with each other. This would be a cool interactive exhibit by today's standards, and it was done 20 years ago.

Below are some examples of the crowdsourced art produced by PumaPaint. Mathew Stein considers the painting on the right from 2005 to be the single "most interesting piece from PumaPaint."

Whether or not Mathew Stein realizes he is an artist, I do. And much of my own robotic art has been inspired by his early work.

Crowdsourced Einstein

This crowdsourced portrait of Einstein turned out to be a lot more popular than I was expecting.  Got written up here which resulted in all sorts of attention.  Though I am of course a big fan, I didn't realize that Einstein was such a popular media figure.

Crowdsourced Musicians

This triptych was painted by hundreds of people over 6 weeks. The time lapse video shows the final two weeks when the third canvas was being worked on. It is of three Washington D.C. Street Performers that calmed my crying daughter with a soothing rendition of Killing Me Softly.

Crowdsourced Portrait of Mother

Crowdsourced Portrait of the Artist's Mother entry for Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2016.

My First Portrait of Corinne

Crowdsourced Portrait of Corinne.  

St. Peters at Harper's Ferry

View of St Peter's from the Shenandoah River painted by half a dozen participants on 11/19/2013. Perhaps the most colorful painting to date. Project took two days amid multiple palette and design changes. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this autumnal meditation is the feint but visible silhouette of Sponge Bob Square Pants in the top right hand corner. As this painting was a crowdsourced painting, complete creative license was handed over to anyone who participated. It would seem that one of the participants was a Sponge Bob fan.

What would happen if I just let anyone paint anything?

Thought we would test out and see what would happen if we gave the users no direction at all and only black and white paint. In earlier paintings there was always a trace image which served as a goal that people could work towards.

Crowdsourced Gandhi

This portrait came together much faster than anticipated. I originally planned to keep it up all week, but after only a day of painting it looked beautiful, so I decided to pull it out of the robot. One of the rare aspects of this painting is that it escaped vandalism.

Crowdsourced Queen Elizabeth

Stopped this painting after the second day. Had originally planned to have it up all week, but it just got too interesting. I would love to find out who added the collar. It is so spooky, so much so, I decided it was done. 

Just Received this email about the collar: 

"I was who painted the spooky collar on Queen Elizabeth portrait, also paint the face, clothing and FSM (flying spaghetti monster) in the top right. I would like to add that the necklace was a kind of futuristic necklace.

I love your artistic idea is fantastic from Spain I can paint a painting in America. - C Mas" 

Crowdsourced Buzz Aldrin

Somewhere in Germany, the imagination of an artist was captured by this portrait meant to commemorate Buzz Aldrin's moon landing. The artist's name was R. Meyer. Where others saw an American Hero, R. Meyer saw a muscle bound psychopath. No matter how many times people tried to paint over his strokes, R. Meyer would return and repaint his vision. Over and over, back and forth, R. Meyer would not be dissuaded, until finally it was time for us to move on to the next painting.

R. Meyer was triumphant and his interpretation won out over all others.

Mother of Pigeons

Second in our portrait series lasting the month. We are basically loading in one portrait after another throughout July. This portrait was taken in the same room as the previous one of my brother. The subject spontaneously grabbed a pigeon doll that was lying around and incorporated it in the photo. Not sure why I liked it, but I did and it worked for me.

Child Portrait Beta 87

Crowd sourced painting robot test run Beta 87. Good mix of human and AI contributions. Brush cleaner working much better.

Crowdsourced George Washington

Crowdsourced portrait of George Washington. These paintings are becoming more and more interesting. Three attempts at vandalism occurred on this piece but each time moire strokes were performed that repaired most of it. You can still see writing across the bottom and a dollar sign near his forehead.

New York City Skyline

Time Lapse Video of Robotic Painting of New York City Skyline. This painting was completed over the course of three days by CrowdPainter, an online crowd-sourced robotic painting project. For details, visit crowdpainter.com.

Crowdsourced Martin Luther King Memorial

This is a time lapse of a recent painting completed by crowdpainter.com. The painting starts off being painted over another older work, but when the first angle of MLK comes off lacking, a third and final painting begins featuring a close up of his face. The portrait is based on a photo taken of his memorial in the Washington DC Downtown Mall.

Crowdsourced Liberty

This is a painting of the Statue of Liberty by CrowdPainter. It is a time-lapsed rendering of a painting that took over two days to complete. At least 3 individuals contributed to this painting, possibly more. This was made while the robot is still in Beta. It is the 37th project by the robot, though admittedly, many of the projects have been small or failed to incomplete. At this point about 5 paintings have been finished, the subject of each being related to a National Park.