TechnoArt

Painting vertical surfaces on building using drones. Credit: Carlo Ratti Associati

Through the millennia artists have leveraged on available tools to express their feelings and vision of the world. Earlier it was the scratching of cave walls with stones and shells, painting graffiti with minerals and herbs, making them shine by covering the paint with the white of the egg.

Paint technology got better and better through the centuries, we can still admire painting in bright colours in Egyptian tombs dating 2000 years BC.

Brushes have also improved, from reeds to badger’s hair, to synthetic material.

Photography and cinema in the last century gave way to new forms of art expressions. Holograms are more recent ones. Technology has been an instrument for artists and new technology opens up new ways for artistic expression.

Hence, in a way, it is not a surprise that drones are being considered as tools for expressing art. Intel has orchestrated hundreds of drones, each carrying LEDs, to create hovering masterpieces in the night sky (watch the clip).

Now I saw a wonderful example of arts leveraging on technology created by Carlo Ratti Associati: using drones to paint on vertical surfaces in building.

They created an application, Paint by Drone, that allows the orchestration of drones to spray on vertical surface. Each drone is equipped with a paint reservoir and can be easily directed to fly at the right distance, and speed, from the “canvas”. The artist can paint on a tablet and the system converts its painting into flying instruction to the drone.
The first public demonstrations are planned later this year in Berlin and in Turin.

About Roberto Saracco

Roberto Saracco fell in love with technology and its implications long time ago. His background is in math and computer science. Until April 2017 he led the EIT Digital Italian Node and then was head of the Industrial Doctoral School of EIT Digital up to September 2018. Previously, up to December 2011 he was the Director of the Telecom Italia Future Centre in Venice, looking at the interplay of technology evolution, economics and society. At the turn of the century he led a World Bank-Infodev project to stimulate entrepreneurship in Latin America. He is a senior member of IEEE where he leads the New Initiative Committee and co-chairs the Digital Reality Initiative. He is a member of the IEEE in 2050 Ad Hoc Committee. He teaches a Master course on Technology Forecasting and Market impact at the University of Trento. He has published over 100 papers in journals and magazines and 14 books.