Leonel Moura capa de revista Artificial Life (MIT Press) // by @PauloQuerido 

A revista “Artificial Life” dedica as capas dos 4 números do ano de 2008 à obra “Swarm Paintings” de Leonel Moura, gerada por um dos seus primeiros robots pintores.
Trata-se do reconhecimento de que para além da componente artística estas obras têm uma base científica relevante que se inscreve na mais actual investigação sobre inteligência e vida artificiais — refere Leonel Moura.
Os seus robots pintores têm suscitado um considerável interesse no meio científico, sendo objecto de referência em várias publicações e papers assim como inúmeras participações em conferências internacionais.
Criada por Christopher Langton e editada pela MIT Press, a Artificial Life diz: “The cover depicts one of the Swarm Paintings produced in 2001 by Leonel Moura. These paintings were the result of several experiments with an Ant Algorithm that applied virtual emergent pheromone trails to a real space pictorial expression. In this case, a computer running an ant algorithm was connected to a robotic arm (a CAD/CAM machine), which translated trails generated by the artificial swarm of ants into brush strokes. Considering the dynamics of the deposition/evaporation mechanism, the robotic arm would operate only when a certain pheromone peak threshold was reached. The swarm paintings initiated Moura’s use of robotics in emergent machine creativity. In the same year he produced a swarm of autonomous ant-like-robots (coined ArtSBot) with sensorial capacity and in which pheromones were replaced by color. In 2006 a creative autonomous robot, RAP (Robotic Art Painter), was installed as a permanent resident at the Museum of Natural History in New York.”