untitled portrait (2019). Artist Paul Klee described the creative process as a feedback loop. The painter makes a mark then steps back to evaluate the mark before making the next mark. The artist does this over and over again as each brushstroke provides input for how and where the next stroke will be made in a creative feedback loop.
Autonymo.us Portraits are made by robots using this exact process. The robots use a brush, camera, and more than two dozen artificial intelligence algorithms to make marks, analyze the marks, and make more marks as the painting evolves from a blank canvas into a completed portrait. The A.I. used ranges from simple k-means clustering to some of the more complicated deep learning techniques including CNNs and GANs. More important than the specific A.I. algorithms used, however, is the fact that they are all competing for control of the brush and in doing so contributing to the direction of each autonymo.us portrait.
