When 68-year-old artist Dragan Ilić realised he was no longer agile enough to create exactly what he wanted, he wasn't deterred. The Serbian artist makes massive abstract works using pencil and paint, filling whole rooms. "When I noticed I had got old and less able, I knew I needed a helper," explains Ilić. "That helper turned out to be a robot."
By using an industrial bot to carry him, Ilić is now able to create unique patterns on large-scale canvases, by pre-programming its movements. He spent 15 years searching for the right machine to suspend him above his canvases before discovering a second-hand Kuka K210+DI that was perfect for the job.
Originally used for stacking heavy industrial loads, the £18,000 robot can carry up to 210kg. To create Ilić's pieces, the robot's movements are first programmed according to a pencil drawing made by the artist himself.
Once it's programmed, Ilić is strapped, standing, on to the machine, and moved around a canvas at a rate of two to three metres per second. Drawing with markers, paint or pencils, Ilić records his process, eventually creating an audiovisual art piece.
Having debuted his technique at the Ars Electronica festival in Austria in September 2016, Ilić is pushing the limits of his studio assistant - in occasionally surreal directions. One planned piece involves attaching pencils to the legs of his three pet dogs and lifting them with the machine.
He's also working to combine the robot with brain-computer interfaces, to give his thoughts control over the robot's movements. In doing so, he's again extending his body - and his mind. "I've been waiting for this for years," he says. WIRED's glad it's given him a lift.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
