Painted By Everyone

How many of us will ever see our work on display in an exhibition with our name credited? The few, not the many. As is a regular sponsor at the world’s most elite art fairs, Bombay Sapphire wanted to send a message that art could be more inclusive if everyone were invited into the process. Painted By Everyone is a crowdsourced painting that used two Kuka Robots, Instagram, and the internet to create it. When the painting was complete, it was showcased at The Other Art Fair in LA. Every participant was credited as an exhibiting artist.

Participants were invited to visit PaintedByEveryone.com to select a color and its corresponding placement on the canvas. They could then view a live feed as their contributions were painted onto the canvas in real time by the robotic arms living at ROW DTLA.

The robots took input from thousands of online users to generate the artwork point by point, which was displayed in its completed form at The Other Art Fair.

The robots could paint multiple colors with 3D printed grippers. Custom fabricated paint daubers were engineered so that the robot arms would be able to grab and paint repeatedly again and again without fail.

Also incorporated into the experience was a macro lens camera that attached to the arm to capture each freshly painted dot. This unique dot became the participant’s personalized mark that they could share on social.

PainedByEveryone.com was a single page experience featuring an interactive area for user participation, a live stream area to watch the experience in real time, and a digital gallery of dots to represent painted areas on the canvas. This portal allowed users from all across the world to participate and collaboratively paint together on one canvas.

After a user submission, a photo takeaway of their dot would be sent to their email with options to share via Facebook, Twitter, etc. After the entire event, a second email takeaway of the completed canvas was sent to everyone who participated.

7,000 people joined in. Including Mr. Jeff Goldblum.

Client: Bombay Sapphire
Agency: BBDO
Robots: VTPro
ECDs: Danilo Boer/Marcos Kolthar
ACDs: Allison Lackey/Bryan Barnes, Joaquin Salim/Mariana Oliveria
Experiential Producer: Adrienne Katz