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2006

Nocturne

Brushstrokes 12,569
24” x 47”

Dulcinea’s representational painting and an homage to the book TurnerWhistlerMonet. The elements in the painting have moved through worlds to arrive on the canvas: model-space, world-space, camera-space, display-space, to robot-space. Light informs us that we are peering into the dark as we enter the painting.

  • Painting called Nocturne by Dulcinea the painting robot and modern inventor Paul Kirby

All This Math

Each element of the painting (waves, mountains, sky, and clouds) was mathematically created with a three-dimensional wire-mesh in a virtual world. The wire mesh was created using fractional Brownian motion (fBm), as was discussed in the “Yellow Pointillism” painting.

Paul wrote a 3-D graphics pipeline in Lisp, which allowed for transporting each element (such as water) from model-space, through world-space, camera-space and display-space to eventually robot-space.

He calculated the lighting and reflections with Lambert’s Law of light behavior. Finally, he removed rear-facing and obstructed surfaces.

A light source from behind the viewer’s left shoulder suggests the viewer is peering from the light into the dark to recreate the emotive effect of Whistler.

  • Painting called Nocturne by Dulcinea the painting robot and modern inventor Paul Kirby