Hektor: the Graffiti Robot 222
Lopex writes "Gizmodo has a story about Hektor, a graffiti robot. Apparently it is for the extremely geeky (or perhaps extremely lazy) tagger. Hektor.ch has photos, information (pdf), and a movie (15 Mb) of it in action."
OK, that's pretty damn cool... (Score:4, Insightful)
Billboard Appliations? (Score:5, Insightful)
Taggers SUCK (Score:0, Insightful)
It's ugly, it's destructive, and it sure ain't art.
You might as well just smear a public place with your own feces. Same effect.
Re:Art? (Score:1, Insightful)
way to generalize, stereotype and hate what you don't understand
plenty of taggers are both better technical artists than you will ever even dream of being, and also have nothing to do with gangs at all
for such an 'educated' site, /. has some of the most blatant reactionary tunnel vision to be found on the planet
Re:Art? (Score:2, Insightful)
In response to another followup - Art (like beauty) is in the eye of the beholder.
There are peeps who say that all graffiti is vandalism, and others that all graffiti is art.
Like any good fence sitter: I've seen some amazing renditions done with spray cans over "public" walls. These to me are art. Amazing use of colour, form. Many with a social message.
"Tagging", which if interpret it correctly, means basically signing your name on every exposed surface you can find, to me is vandalism. I've seen "taggers" scrawl stupid looking black squiggles that even a demented three year-old wouldn't bother producing scrawled on such creative places such as the sides of trains, bus-shelters and toilet doors.
My pet hate is when they paint right over the top of more elaborate and creative works. Its almost as if "I couldn't do something like that, so I'm going to fuck it up".
There is middle ground, but most graffiti I've seen falls into one of these two camps.
Re:OK, that's pretty damn cool... (Score:3, Insightful)
While you were typing this cynical view, I was considering what I'd have to do to pull off something. What modifications/enhancements I'd need to go 4 color, how to get away from paint cans. A bit of engineering and a decent exercise, but I think it could be done. Honestly, it's already been done, but not portably, afaik, for a small unit. I'm just curious how much propellant would be needed to spray like an airbrush. If CO2 could be used, how much would be needed, how to keep it from freezing up, etc.
More practical applications keep occuring to me as I think about it. Why not make these or lease them out to do painting in difficult or hazardous locations (i.e. underside of bridges.) Looking for a new way to make a living? Seems like opportunity for some bright minds to pool and do this commercially.
After the last time I put up with the aggrevation of using a Wagner Powerpainter to stain the side of a house, this seems like a dream come true. Just screw in a couple hooks and set something like this up to do most of the work.
Re:Art? (Score:2, Insightful)
But hey...art or not, IT'S NOT YOUR FSCKING WALL!!! Buy a goddamn canvas or get someone's permission before you paint their building. This is a simple case of "your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins."
Re:Art? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention before hand they'd have to get the image into a format they can use (again, I didn't read if the creaters have a program that can take any vector based graphic or what). Add in that to get beyond black and white (not even grey tones as the robot doesn't feather the paint or anything), you'd have to overlay multiple layers of color, the challenge goes up, and if you had to create a separate image for each layer and figure out how they'd overlay/interact, then I'd say the challenges are quite significant indeed.
Granted, most of this art is going to be more like logos since you can't do shading to achieve the familiar bubble letters you see, but I'd say it's still art . . .
Re:Art? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's an awfully black and white view of the world.
I suppose that all of those cave paintings were some punk kid throwing up gang signs for the bison gang.
You wanna roll with the bison, fool?
I cower in the face of your awesome intellect (Score:1, Insightful)
Why am I not suprised that the best you can do is make a masterbation reference?
Probably because you operate at the mental level of a primate anyway - so all you can can handle is shit-slinging and self-manipulation. As evidenced by your chosen "hobby" which amounts to public self-gratification anyway.
Guess what? We don't want to see you playing with your pathetically tiny penis. Have the good sense to do that in private instead.
Re:I saw this (Score:1, Insightful)