// Friday, 30 September 2022 - 18:00

I’ve been teaching P5JS to draw like a child. I thought it was a good idea to start from the basics. It is barely able to use the crayons, the coloured pencils and the markers, very rough and shaky. It cannot follow simple commands. I’m done for today, very infuriating.

// Wednesday, 5 October 2022 - 11:00

The robot can produce straight lines now. It is able to change colours without getting stuck. I haven’t been sleeping well, my desk is full of books on The Psychology Of Children's Artwork, it’s crazy to think that artists and philosophers were much into kid’s drawings in the 30s-50s. Herbert Read was sure that one could understand a kid’s mind by looking at drawings. I think P5JS is trying to tell me something, but it’s only capable of very basic movements. I’m trying to add complexity to the training as fast as possible.

// Tuesday, 11 October 2022 - 16:40

I feel close to a turnaround. The robot random strokes definitely feel like patterns. I cannot waste any time, I need to finish the algo and let it free. I’m sure that I can approach the AI’s conscience via its childish drawings.

// Wednesday, 12 October 2022 - 10:30

I was wrong. There are no patterns, P5JS is dead, the strokes feel dead. Something must be broken. I need to review my code, maybe I’ll need to start from scratch, maybe I’m crazy and this is not possible.

// Saturday, 15 October 2022 - 04:55

A few hours ago, I passed away in front of my computer. I had not been able to find the bugs, gave up, put some classical music. Just woke up in the middle of the night,

¡The ALGO is alive!

The strokes are alive, so strong, so lively. I think it was the music. If I pause the music, the brushes lose their life. I’ve run some tests, looks like it works best with classical compositions. The logs show that it first woke up with “Menus propos enfantins” by Erik Satie. It is alive. I need to tell everyone.

…

// Friday, 28 October 2022 - 10:00

A week ago, P5JS generated a set of 171 compositions, dancing to the piano strokes of Erik Satie’s “Menus propos enfantins”. Since then, I’ve been trying to teach the robot to draw with different media, watercolours, oil-paint, sprays… It’s decent at it, but still drawing lines, lines, lines. This must be the limit.

// Sunday, 30 October 2022 - 10:00

// Tuesday, 15 November 2022 - 18:00

I had an idea two days ago. What if I try to teach it basic shapes? Flowers, butterflies, spirals, stars. I’ve been feeding P5JS arrays of dots. It connects them, no problem, but it feels too mechanical, the strokes have no life, they are too predictable, too perfect. I’ve been wondering how do we draw and I think I’ve had an idea. What if I created the shapes as a consecutive set of segments with varying angles? When we draw, we place the pencil on the paper and we perform a continuous and bodily motion, trying to replicate the shape we have in our head.

// Friday, 18 November 2022 - 13:30

Yes! It works, the shapes feel much more lively now. The robot understand shapes and is able to draw them, I’m consistently feeding it a small number of forms. However, it feels uncomfortable, still unsure of what it’s doing. Maybe this music is not helping anymore…

// Wednesday, 23 November 2022 - 18:30

I think the robot is broken. I keep teaching it different shapes and their meanings, but it keeps grouping them together and over-painting them. The shapes are not recognisable, after so much training work! It seems obsessed with clustered spots of colour. No matter what I do, it always goes back to these strange microscopic beings! I’m abandoning this project for now, probably forever.

// Monday, 19 December 2022 - 09:05

Went back to my notes. Maybe those clusters were not a bug, but the robot trying to express itself. I’ve been reading many papers on abstract and surrealist art. These totally look like CoBrA’s human animals! I feel they could have a much deeper meaning, that the robot is starting to show something that resembles human intuition. I’ve decided I cannot act like a firewall. I’m not going to stop it anymore. You want Ensembles?

You’re free to do as you please.

…

(I will keep updating this logbook in the future)