The Painting Fool

close_up_129.jpgThe Painting Fool is a computer program and artwork developed originally in 2001 by Simon Colton and researchers at the Computational Creativity Research Group at Imperial College, London. Colton’s ultimate goal for The Painting Fool was to create a piece that is seen as purely creative, what he refers to as “Computational Creativity”; he believed that to achieve this The Painting Fool was required to have behaviors that are skillful, appreciative, and imaginative. Skillful behaviors deal with the mechanical physical process of painting. The Painting Fool is able to take a scan of a photograph and determine the individual colors used within the composition, grouping them together in similar palettes. In addition The Painting Fool records the different pastel, pencil, and brush strokes as well as an analysis of the animation of strokes