A New Kind of Art | Robot Art | Artificial Life | Non-human art | Artificial Creativity
Science solves problems. Art makes problems.
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NEWS
RAP [Robotic Action Painter] at Itau Cultural, São Paulo, Brasil
RAP [Robotic Action Painter] and Artificial Creativity
"The cover depicts one of the Swarm Paintings produced in 2001 by Leonel Moura. These paintings were the result of several experiments with an Ant Algorithm that applied virtual emergent pheromone trails to a real space pictorial expression. In this case, a computer running an ant algorithm was connected to a robotic arm (a CAD/CAM machine), which translated trails generated by the artificial swarm of ants into brush strokes. Considering the dynamics of the deposition/evaporation mechanism, the robotic arm would operate only when a certain pheromone peak threshold was reached. The swarm paintings initiated Moura’s use of robotics in emergent machine creativity. In the same year he produced a swarm of autonomous ant-like-robots (coined ArtSBot) with sensorial capacity and in which pheromones were replaced by color. In 2006 a creative autonomous robot, RAP (Robotic Art Painter), was installed as a permanent resident at the Museum of Natural History in New York."
Radio SETI, Science and Art: Worlds Apart?
Are We Alone? is produced by the SETI Institute.
Shows are available for immediate download and listenting in both Windows Media (.wma) and .mp3 formats. The show is also podcast.
ART SPACE
A space in Lisbon dedicated to show robot art and other projects of Artificial Creativity.
New art needs new exhibition environments. Hence I have created a space of my own intended to present recent works, as well as ancient pieces that can help contextualize a process of evolution from conceptual art to robotic and technological art.
Rua das Janelas Verdes, 76, Lisboa. Gallery contact
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ART WORKS | ROBOT ART | NON-HUMAN ART | ARTIFICIAL CREATIVITY
Electric Life
Alive! installation presents robots as a new kind of life. Still an essential electrical and electronic based life, but able to raise questions about life, intelligence, culture and art.
Alive! is made out of 20 small robots, coined Aractrons, that react to the presence of humans and interact with each other in a swarm fashion.
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The first robot zoo in the world. Conceived as an art installation for a public garden it is constituted by a large glass structure containing 45 autonomous and self-sustained robots.
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TARA, The Interactive Art Robot, 2007
Tara is my first interactive painter robot. Visitors can change some parameters and watch its effect on the painting process. Tara was created exclusively for the Pavilion of Knowledge / Ciência Viva, Lisbon, Portugal.
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New Tree of Life, 2007
Robots as a new life branch.
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Named after Isidore Isou the creator, back in the 50’s, of the French movement known as the 'Letrisme', ISU is able to draw letters and words and from there generate pictorial compositions.
Like in lettrism, which campaign for the use of the letter as the basis of a new art form, ISU generates by itself a series of letters and words that may or may not trigger on the viewer meaning.
These references to 20th century art movements do not seek any kind of historical legitimacy, but are intended simply to show how certain morphogenesis processes produce similar results in human as well as non-human artists.
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My painting robots generate art works based on emergence. The essential of those creations is based on the machine own interpretation of the world and not on its human description. No previous plan, fitness, aesthetical taste or artistic model are induced. The robots are just machines dedicated to their art.
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Dada 2.0 intends to reflect the destructive character of robotics, as clever machines raises new questions about humanity, intelligence, culture and art, and furthermore, embodies a new kind of life that confronts mankind fears and expectations.
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An art work able to recognize the presence of viewers and interact with them by approaching and determine the size of their bodies. iSculpture inverts the traditional relation between spectator and art objects, as in this case it is the work of art that observes the human viewer.
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An ongoing project with the aid of a GPS device, based on the psicogeography experiments by the situationists in the 50’s.
Essay by Debord...
The first autonomous robots able to create their own art forms. They are equipped with environmental awareness and a small brain that runs algorithms based on simple rules. The resulting paintings are not predetermined, emerging rather from the combined effects of randomness and stigmergy, that is, indirect communication trough the environment.
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Paintings based on a diagram coined after the Russian mathematician Georgy Voronoy (1868-1908). Voronoi diagrams represent the partition of a given space into cells. Each cell interacts directly to its neighbours and indirectly to all the space. The resulting design is thus dynamic and simulates a self-organized structure.
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first experiments with a very primitive autonomous painting robot with just one color sensor. When color is detected the robot draws a full circle.
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Paintings made by an ‘ant algorithm’ plugged to a cad/cam machine.
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3d forms generated by an "ant algorithm".
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with Vitorino Ramos
Project designed for the Utopia Biennial 2001, Cascais.
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several experiments based on an "ant algorithm" developed by Vitorino Ramos.
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collages generated by a random process using the RGB channels.
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ARCHITECTURE
project phase
A park in Algarve to serve as a tourist center and attraction.
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Head-office for the Association of Hotels and Tourist Development at Albufeira, Algarve.
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An old rice factory renovated to house a contemporary art center in the town of Ponte de Sor in the south of Portugal.
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BOOKS
Leonel Moura, Fenda Edition, 21 x 15 cm, 96 color pages
An essay on robots, robot art and the future.
ISBN: 978-989-603-033-9
Order at LEONEL MOURA ARTe
Leonel Moura, Edition: NonSoloParole, 20,5 x 14,5 cm, 80 b/w pages
Italian translation from "Fogo em Lisboa".
ISBN: 978-888-885-052-8
Order at Editor
Leonel Moura et al, Edition: Prates Gallery, 23,5 x 15 cm, 64 color pages
Book/catalogue from the exhibition 'Bioart' at Prates Gallery, 2005.
ISBN: 978-972-863-903-7
Order at Prates Gallery, Lisbon
Leonel Moura and Henrique Garcia Pereira, Edition: Institut d'Art Contemporain, Lyon/Villeurbanne, France, 21 x 15 cm, 112 color pages
The book describes a new form of art emerging from the relation between man and autonomous robots that produce paintings through randomness and stigmergic positive feedback.
ISBN: 978-290-598-567-4
Order at Amazon.fr
Leonel Moura, Edition: Campo das Letras, 21 x 13,5 cm, 80 b/w pages
ISBN: 978-972-610-616-6
Order at Editor
Leonel Moura et al. Utopia Biennial, 21 x 15 cm, 144 color pages
Text: Swarm paintings, Non-human Art.
ISBN: 978-290-598-563-7
Order at IAC, Institut d'Art Contemporain, France
Leonel Moura, Edition: AAAL, 23 x 15 cm, 96 b/w pages
An introduction to some alife ideas and its use on art and society.
ISBN: 978-972-959-004-7
Out-of-print
Leonel Moura, Edition Iralka, 21 x 14 cm, 96 b/w pages
Spanish translation from "Os homens lixo".
ISBN: 978-848-980-600-9
Order at Libro Verde
Leonel Moura, Edition Grasset, Paris, 20 x 14 cm, 136 b/w pages
A book on homelessness and social exclusion.
ISBN: 978-224-659-071-2
Order at Amazon.fr
Leonel Moura, Edition: Fenda, Lisbon, 21,5 x 11,5 cm, 88 b/w pages
Several textes on culture and the 'Melancolia' series.
ISBN:978-972-852-903-1
Out-of-print
Leonel Moura, Edition: Fenda, Lisbon, 18,5 x 12 cm, 104 b/w pages
Photo series from the 70's.
ISBN: 978-972-918-454-3
Just a few left
Order at LEONEL MOURA ARTe
Leonel Moura, Edition: Fenda, Lisbon, 21,5 x 11,5 cm, 104 b/w pages
Photo series from the 70's.
ISBN: 978-972-918-434-8
Out of print
Leonel Moura, Edition: Institut d'Art Contemporain, Lyon/Villeurbanne, France, 24 x 17 cm, 160 b/w pages
Several textes on art and culture printed by occasion of Leonel Moura’s retrospective at IAC.
ISBN:978-290-598-517-8
Order at Amazon.fr
The new species, 2007
TEXTS [EN]
Textos em português
Note: a few texts may repeat some parts as they were produced for different contexts but regarding similar issues
Robots are a new kind of life born to share the planet with us.
Robot Zoo, 2007
My painting robots generate art works based on emergence. The essential of those creations is based on the machine own interpretation of the world and not on its human description.
The poor zoid, 2007
Natural and artificial evolution has something in common: the environment.
Robot Art, 2007
My painting robots generate art works based on emergence. The essential of those creations is based on the machine own interpretation of the world and not on its human description.
A new art paradigm, 2007
Out of the museums and art galleries many works are totally irrelevant and reduced to their real condition of garbage.
A reboot is required.
A brief history of robotics, 2007
Robotics must be seen as an amplification of life: a new kind of species born from a postnature context in order to stimulate, expand and enhance the available intelligence on the planet.
Robot Art: A New Kind of Art, 2007
To "take the human factor out of the loop" is a central topic if one intends to produce true machine creativity.
A New Kind of Art: The Robotic Action Painter, 2007
In the context of robotics RAP [Robotic Action Painter] demonstrates that machine creativity can be achieved by means of randomness, stigmergy and chromotaxis.
The End Of Art As We Know It, 2005
The Painting Robots were created to paint. Not my paintings but their own paintings. Such an objective may seem simple but in fact it adresses some of the most critical ideas on art, robotics and artificial intelligence.
Bioart, 2005
with Henrique Garcia Pereira
Bioart is a new kind of biological inspired art that campaigns for the emergence of a new artificial, dynamic and self-sustainable Nature.
A new kind of art: the painting robots, 2005
with Henrique Garcia Pereira
The painting robots are artificial ‘organisms’ able to create their own art forms. They are equipped with environmental awareness and a small brain that runs algorithms based on simple rules. The resulting paintings are not predetermined, emerging rather from the combined effects of randomness and stigmergy, that is, indirect communication trough the environment.
A True unmanned art [Paper for Consciousness Reframed, Beijing], 2004
with Henrique Garcia Pereira
A true unmanned art depends on the capacity to produce mechanical 'organisms' able to create their own art. This can be achieved by building devices with some kind of environmental awareness that run algorithms based on simple rules. The art produced is not predetermined in any manner, resulting rather from randomness and stigmergy, that is, indirect communication between multiple agents trough the environment. To witness the construction of a painting by autonomous robots represents for the human viewer an experience of global consciousness.
SYMBIOTIC ART recombining art, science and philosophy, 2004
with Henrique Garcia Pereira
This is the first experiment of collective robotics in the artistic realm.
Making artists [Published in Exit Express, Madrid], 2004
Making artists it’s much more fun than just making art.
Symbiotic Art Manifesto [Making the Artists that make the Art], 2004
with Henrique Garcia Pereira
1) Machines can make art; 2) Man and machines can make symbiotic art; 3) Symbiotic art is a new paradigm that opens an entire unexploited field in art; 4) Object manufacturing and the reign of the hand in art can be abandoned; 5) Personal expression and of the human/artist centrality can be abandoned; 6) Any moralistic or spiritual pretension and any representation purposes can be abandoned.
Trails, Ants and Anarchy, 2002
PDF document
Stigmergy, 2002
An interview with Social Fiction
Swarm Paintings - Non-human art, 2001
The main objective of an artificial art is to overcome the anthropocentric bias.
Instant Paintings, 2001
Choose randomly three pre-existing images of art works and mix them in the RGB channels. The result is an instant painting.
PDF document
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