Ex machina

Simon Ingram is New Zealand’s painting machine guy and he’s the one who got OTN interested in them. Over the years we've looked out for machines that paint, or rather machines that are programmed to paint as they can't quite yet casually pick up a brush as part of their own personal practice. Progress is being made though and a recent machine invented by Professor Simon Colton from the University of London has software that allows it to be influenced (a phase artists, including machine artists, seem to have to work through). Colton’s machine checks out newspaper stories and makes works based on the words it gathers from them.
 
The three laws of painting machines for those who don’t remember them are:
1. A painting machine may not kick up at the 50 percent commission charged by humans or, through inaction, fail to pay it.
2. A painting machine must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would prevent it producing the sort of art that is demanded by local collectors.
3. A painting machine must protect its own painting style in so far as such protection does not infringe the copyright of other painting machines.
Image: portrait by one of Prof Colton's machines