[Niklas Roy] obviously had a great time building this generative art cabinet that puts you in the role of the curator – ever-changing images show on the screen, but it’s only when you put your money in that it prints yours out, stamps it for authenticity, and cuts it off the paper roll with a mechanical box cutter.
If you like fun machines, you should absolutely go check out the video, embedded below. The LCD screen has been stripped of its backlight, allowing you to verify that the plot exactly matches the screen by staring through it. The screen flashes red for a sec, and your art is then dispensed. It’s lovely mechatronic theater. We also dig the “progress bar” that is represented by how much of your one Euro’s worth of art it has plotted so far. And it seems to track perfectly; Bill Gates could learn something from watching this. Be sure to check out the build log to see how it all came together.
You’d be forgiven if you expected some AI to be behind the scenes these days, but the algorithm is custom designed by [Niklas] himself, ironically adding to the sense of humanity behind it all. It takes the Unix epoch timestamp as the seed to generate a whole bunch of points, then it connects them together. Each piece is unique, but of course it’s also reproducible, given the timestamp. We’re not sure where this all lies in the current debates about authenticity and ownership of art, but that’s for the comment section.
If you want to see more of [Niklas]’s work, well this isn’t the first time his contraptions have graced our pages. But just last weekend at Hackaday Europe was the first time that he’s ever given us a talk, and it’s entertaining and beautiful. Go check that out next.
Niiiiiiiiiceeeeeeeee love it!
This is pretty cool. Once money is involved, I can’t help wondering whether the coin box/etc added much to the cost, or the risk of vandalism. Does physical money vs an online payment link change the likelihood that people donate/buy? How much of the artist’s intent was just to raise these questions, with the specific art just being a tool to do that?
Hi Jim, I’ll try to answer: I had the coin validator mechanism for over a decade in my junk box, so it basically added no cost in the production of the machine and the machine has physical locks, but it isn’t designed to withstand vandalism. It is intended for art exhibitions rather than public spaces, so I hope the social norms of such environments are enough to ensure the security of the piece and the coins inside.
Dropping a coin has an interesting effect on visitor engagement: they often observe the movement of the line on the screen for quite some time before deciding to drop a coin at the “right” moment. I had the impression they looked at it longer than they would if the work would only be screen-based, as they quite literally become invested in it.
However, the downside of using a Euro coin for interaction is that many people don’t have a one-Euro coin with them when they encounter the machine. In that case, an online payment might work better—but then it wouldn’t involve the same direct exchange of giving something physical and valuable to the machine and receiving something physical and, well, also valuable in return.
Also, thanks, Elliot, for the very nice write-up!
Needs a secondary device to allow coinless visitors to ‘earn’ credits toward a print. Something as simple as a hand-cranked generator that needs to be spun a specific rate for a certain period of time to earn a one-euro credit that can be only redeemed for a single printout. Attach the generator to a light bulb that illuminates the dial that shows the rotational rate (with a window for earning credit) and the fraction of a credit earned. It should be robust enough to not burn out if children or trolls try to overdrive it, but simulating burn out to discourage that sort of thing could be part of the experience. Or something like that.
One art, please.
Very well done.
Really cool statement on ai generated artwork. Also, this is not an easy project, I’m impressed all around.
This isn’t AI, by the looks of it? Given it has timestamp/seed – it may be deterministic, driven by time and some generator function?
What a great idea!!!
Please use YouTube videos, they can be watched in landscape mode on a phone.
I love this. For me, the art is the build – it is beautiful.
Just add a color printer and google images, it’s not the 80s anymore.
Getting Tim Hunkin arcade machine vibes from this, which is a Good Thing.
Very cool. Well done.
And nicely presented video.