Hektor: the Graffiti Robot

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."

Hooray

[stratjakt]

A variation of an XY plotter, hanging from cables, gravity pulls it in the Y direction.

A friend and I did something practically identical years ago for a tech shop project in high school, though we werent allowed to use spraypaint, so we had it draw on walls with magic markers, like a giant hanging etch-a-sketch. Worked pretty well, and really wasnt that complicated to build (QBasic "driver" software included)

Art?

[s0l0m0n]

Where's the art? I'm sure that there are lots of people who would argue that graffiti is not art, but I feel that it's a valid form of subversive social commentary.

Most of the Graffiti kids I have known tag for a bunch of reasons..

Reasons like the art of it (I've seen some fantastic tags), but mostly the challenge of getting to a spot where you have time to throw a good tag. I mean, half of what people graffiti is their own name, or TAG, mostly on the biggest, most difficult thing to get to that they can find.

It's about the art, and about the challenge. Using a robot seems like mere automated vandalism.

Robot

[Rupert]

Definitions of robot vary, of course, but I feel that something that has to be attached by a human to the object on which it works does not meet mine.

A real graffiti robot would have suckers, or crampons, or a big extending ladder, not rely on someone else placing pulleys for it.

It's all about Scalability!

[Flat Feet Pete]

OK, so one guy can paint a shed, but to paint the side of a tower block, you need scaffolds or a lift and time. Lots of money.

With this thing you just need a longer piece of rope and two mount points. Bigger building? longer rope. Switch the paint nozzle by radio. Even bigger building, just a longer rope.

Re:Art?

[centralizati0n]

Who said they would be doing it to vandalize? I'm sure that some company would want these people to do something like the Che art, except in their company logo or something similar. Obviously, the driver system they are using (check out the fonts) is advanced enough that they can create almost anything in B&W that they want.

Re:Art?

[warpedrive]

Graffiti tagging is not art. It's someone who damages the works of engineers, city planners, other muralists and artists. In as far as I can see it's a far cry between making a building, a train, or a bus stop, and 'signing' your name on it.. Just because you don't put the effort in to do something really constructive, doesn't mean that writing your name on everything you see makes you creative.

It's somewhat equivalent to scrawling you name over top of a Renoir, and saying you've created a new work of art. It's obvious you haven't - you've simply defaced another's work.

Re:Taggers SUCK

[Jugalator]

I know what I see at least, and I also agree it looks like shit. :-)

Re:Art?

[NixLuver]

Yeah it's a shame how black and white people tend to be. When someone lends something to me it's borrowing, but when I steal it, that makes it wrong.

Except for the fact that you completely miss the entire point; if you 'steal' my car, I no longer have any use of it; painting a pretty picture (I've seen everything from Marylin Monroe to "I Rok" tagged onto things) on the side of a train or a bus may annoy someone, but it doesn't keep the object form serving its purpose - i.e., the bus can still pick people up and deliver them to their stops, and people can still go into the county courthouse and pay their taxes.

The other thing that you've left out is that, in the case of a 'public' building or other property, the person doing the 'tagging' is at least nominally a part-owner in that public property; Again, perhaps annoying, but not completely irrelevant.