Twitch Paints

Painting Audience Instructed Robot

A quick explainer of our painting robot project to date! We talk about our inspiration for this project, how we learned to build it from scratch, and our thoughts on how its going now.

We stream our painting robot (P_A_I_R) controlled via Twitch Chat. We call it Twitch Paints. It’s a project exploring collaboration and accessibility, encouraging anyone online to make a painting together. Every painting has multiple collaborators, usually 20-30 people. And each collaborator differs from their background to their ability. One thing remains constant--each painter uses the same digital tools to make a real-life painting together.

Twitch Paints - Livestream Timelapses

We curate the painting experience by selecting the canvas, paint colors, brushes, and paint time. The rest of the painting process relies on painters’ commands through Twitch Chat.

P_A_I_R is an ever-changing and growing project. Our collaborators interact uniquely with each painting tool, command, and each other. To curate a painting experience, we regularly update tools and commands. We explore with our collaborators how to create an artistic dialogue right on screen.

Paintings

Below are some of the paintings we’ve made on our Twitch Paints livestream. We’ve made over two dozen paintings on our stream.

Find more of our Twitch Plays and other painting robot work on our @paintingrobot Instagram page.