An Investigation into Alternatives to Pixel Based Colour Rendering using a Digitally Driven Physical Mark Making Process

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Although artists and designers have adopted digital photographic rendering techniques, there has been no fundamental questioning of the underpinning theory behind the process. Four colour separation (halftoning) techniques invented in the early 20th Century have been adopted by the commercial print industry and artists. The timing is now right for a radical re-appraisal of physical rendering techniques for printing. This PhD study will investigate methods of driving a 6 axis robot, Cartesian XYZ platform, and Delta robots to create an interface which transcribes a coloured image created through non-pixel based software through firmware drivers to create a reproducible coherent image and identify which variants within both pixel based and non-pixel based images that affect a robot's mark-making decisions. This project will be empirically based using iterative methodological approach. Verity will undertake a survey of existing vector based software on the market such as Illustrator and Inkscape to understand how these translate to G code to drive 2.D painting robots and machines. Voxel based technology, CAD software, and a range of digitalised drawing devises such as Wacom tablets and I-Pads. She will examine this complex field by: identifying, simplifying and demonstrating how these new tools can be efficiently and appropriately used and identify if these tools can be combined to create a new and intuitive user interface to drive mark-making robots. She will also investigate the limits of painting machines developed for the visual arts (such as Kanno, Sougwen Chung, Berio, Stein, Kudoh at al). She will work in partnership with ColArt to design and test a new range of bespoke tools and brushes adapted for 2.5D painting machines and test the potential of a peristaltic pump to compress paint through tools and brushes driven by robots. She will examine how the variation of nodes, Bezier curves and line length will affect the speed, velocity, pressure and distribution of paint and ink. These tools will be tested via the creation of artworks in collaboration with case study artists to measure the performance and aesthetic problems and solve them. In parallel to the practice-based tests Verity will undertake a literature survey of the alternatives to four colour separation and the philosophical and social problems raised by artworks produced by robots and AI and the wider discussions this technology provokes.