The Artificial Artist is the brainchild of Matthew Brand, former professor at the MIT Media Lab. It is a piece of software that creates Calderesque mobiles from images of animals and faces. The idea was to create a full workstation to be installed at museums where visitors could scan in a picture of their pet or their face, interactively create a mobile with the computer, and then have the mobile laser-cut out of steel. The visitor would then be able to take his/her creation home.

• The official Artificial Artist site.

I worked on the project for two years.

My Contributions

• The software initially made line-drawings of the mobiles. I wrote a module in Open Inventor that took descriptions of the mobile geometry as input and rendered it in 3D on an SGI workstation. The user could watch as the mobile grew into it's final form.
• I then wrote a simulation of the mobile's motion. The user could use the mouse to blow wind at the paddles of the mobile, and it would twist and turn in response. There is no closed form solution to the motion of a mobile, so it was very difficult to approximate it's motion.
• I took my simulation of a mobile's motion and encapsulated it into a self-contained Inventor file using Inventor engines. This way, an interested person could download a self-animating model of the creations of the Artificial Artist. These can be seen on the official web site above.
• I designed and implemented a system to physically create the mobiles. After researching several possibilities, I decided on CNC laser cutting. I taught myself CNC milling techniques, and wrote code to translate a mobile into a series of codes that control a laser cutting machine. I sent these out to a company and created a prototype. The results balanced correctly and were visually attractive.
• I created another interactive demo of the Artificial Artist using a fish sensor developed by the Physics and Media group of the MIT Media Lab. The user could wave his/her hands in front of a computer monitor, and the mobile twisted and turned in response.
• I created a short 3D graphics movie of the project. It features a carousel with mobiles of circus animals. Contact me if you wish to view a VHS version.

The Artificial Artist project was selected to exhibit at the ACM 50th Anniversary Conference and Exhibition in San Jose, California. Matt and I were flown out to California, where we installed and manned our exhibit. My interactive mobile simulations and short movie were run continuously, and thousands of visitors played with my demos.