Malbot
Sector
Tools
Location
Automation
Year of begining
2017
Topic
Modular painting design
Photographer
Dreams and Co.
Malbot is a modular painting controller developed as a parallel to electronic musical instruments in painting technology.
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Malbot is an experimental painting tool on the crossing between a kinetic sculpture and an algorithmized brush. During its development, I was mainly interested in how to use the possibilities of automation and delegation of attention. At the same time, I consider it essential that the role of detail and the attention given to it do not disappear from the painting process. Therefore, in the first phase of prototyping, I dropped primary inspiration from industrial machines, which in the end provided me with a lack of variability.
The resulting prototype of Malbot is inspired by modular controllers known primarily from electronic music production. Like musical synthesizers and effects, Malbot works with the basic frequency (zig-zag pattern) of color poured from a funnel onto the substrate. This frequency can be further modulated by software (using code) and hardware, and the painting itself may or may not be moderated live by the artist and other actors.
Malbot is next to the painting material Glup the main product of the re-design of painting technology, which I am dealing with as part of my Phd project at FAVU in Brno.
As such, this tool/sculpture materializes my appreciation of painting design and its potential for critical innovation.
At the same time, the criticality of its innovation lies in the efficiency of production. The machine is tailored to stimulate new possibilities for collaboration and imagination.
In contrast to "commercial" efficiency, which would focus more on accuracy and simple user access for a production tool.
Modular painting tool thanks to automation it allows you to release part of the attention devoted to the repetition of gestures during the painting process. I further use this freed capacity to moderate the algorithms/factors defining the shape of the tracks themselves.
In the past, painting tools such as brushes were refined to allow greater precision or virtuosity of gestures. The brush, as an extension (metaphor) of the pointing finger, can then better erase, or, on the contrary, highlight the presence of the author's hand.
The breakthrough applicator of colored matter in the last century was the aerosol spray technology (1949, Edward Seymour). This technology represents not only the era of industrial production, when artisanal processes are replaced by faster and more dynamic techniques, but also the dynamics of the development of large cities and suburban cultures such as garfitti.
The idea of the painting controller follows on from the strategy of adapting the painting gesture to contemporary trends.
From today's point of view, I see an interesting policy of open-source design associated with DIY communities and hacker labs for artistic production. I perceive an equally important trend in the accessibility of tools such as CNC routers, 3d printers, or autonomous robots, which have transformed from industrial machines in the era of industry 4.0 into household and hobby equipment.
In the case of a painting tool, I perceive the need for openness in its design, so that it is adaptable to experimental use and various modifications of painting gestures.
The basic factor of the gestures created by Malbot is the viscosity of the applied paint in relation to mechanical movement, gravity and the structure of the substrate. The technique known professionally as "mechanical dripping" (the paint flows out of the glass funnel due to the simple effect of the pressure of the earth's gravity) is essentially a "field recording" of the situation of the creation of the painting. Here, among other things, the properties of the substances of the colored matter, the relief of the place on which the painting is created, or geo-mechanical indices such as gravitational curvature are prescribed.
A kind of synthetic type of figuration is thus reflected in the resulting gesture. Unlike the brush, which imprints the ergonomics of the human body, i.e., human figuration, in Malbot's case, it is an
"Un-tropocentric" figuration, the meaning of which I try to speculate in paintings with the Malbot themselves.
