Patrick Tresset showcases his drawing robots to the MA students
by Theo Papatheodorou
Renown, London-based artist, Patrick Tresset, visited the students of the MA today and talked about his theatrical installations involving drawing robots which obsessively draw sketches of what they see. His machines use computer vision to extract the important features of the face and represent them in the drawing style that Patrick likes
Yet, despite the advanced vision technology that is employed, Patrick says that his machines are more of a study of human behaviour, how humans depict other humans in paper and how humans relate to robots. His drawing robots have travelled the world and he has exhibited them in places such as Tate, Ars Electronica, the Prada foundation, V&A and others. In the process, his machines have generated more than 120,000 sketches.
Tresset was originally trained as a painter and he belongs to the first generation of artists coming out of Goldsmiths College's computing department where he subsequently taught creative robotics. His research focuses on computational aesthetics, social robotics, drawing research and AI and has a great body of research work in these fields.
His future plans are drawing robots who have an evolving drawing style, not one set by Patrick himself. Agents that have a much greater degree of freedom, robots that forge new artistic paths.