Anyone Can Become A "Successful" Artist With Niklas Roy's Painting Machine

If you've dreamt of becoming a successful artist but just haven't got the talent or the connections then Niklas Roy's new project, in collaboration with Kati Hyyppä, could help you to live that dream. If only for a moment. At the Katowice Street Art Festival the pair created the kinetic installation Instant Art Career to give people a chance to create collaborative paintings and then sell them at auction.

The piece consisted of a painting machine which sat in a gallery window so anyone could walk up to it and use the hanging ropes to create a collective artwork that could potentially rock the art world to its core. "The machine bridged the gap between ordinary street life and the glamorous world of art. It launched hundreds of art careers and created skyrocketing fame, which culminated in cash revenue for the artists." proclaims Roy.

A lot of the work looks on the abstract side of the art spectrum, but what else do you expect from a collaborative painting created through a mechanical machine by pulling ropes? The works were then sold off to the highest bidder so the people of Katowice could call themselves professional artists and the circle of ordinary citizen to avant-garde darling was complete.

Explaining the design of the machine, Roy says it was "inspired by computer controlled pen plotters" and works using a series of pulleys so that pulling the ropes would move the canvas in different directions. The machine itself was first modeled in SketchUp before being constructed from wooden parts.

So if you happened to be in Katowice back in April and you were looking for your 15 minutes, this would've provided the perfect opportunity.

@stewart23rd