INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Authors: JordanNew York: American artist Barnaby Furnas has turned to a custom-made robot to help him with
paintings that can sell for more than $100,000 at New York galleries.Furnas and several artists are using digital printing robots that use
techniques in paintings that were previously impossible or too labor intensive
The machines are guided by inputs from artists and optical sensors to paint in fine detail in lines thinner than a human eyelash."I
literally think of that robot as a friend," Furnas said in an interview
"More than a pet, less than an art assistant - somewhere in there."He has used a robot called "sozo," which means imagination in Japanese,
for tasks such as painting thousands of hairs on a bison in one of his artworks.It leaves marks on a canvas according to his instructions
that he communicates through an optical tracking system attached to a paintbrush-like rod. The robots have replaced traditional method of
paintingIt records a painter's movements, allowing artists to edit brushstrokes before putting an image on a canvas
Those digital images can be combined with brushwork from an artist to bring new dimensions to a painting.Sozo was created by technology
startup Artmatr, whose CEO Ben Tritt is a painter
He sees the company as an open-source community that will help artists merge digital technology with traditional painting methods.Besides
Sozo, Artmatr also has a variety of machines that use ink jet heads found in printers."It lowers the risk threshold for individual mark
making," Furnas said.© Thomson Reuters 2018(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by staff and is published from a
