Does the future of creativity belong to humans or robots? Perhaps the answer is both.
Bombay Sapphire, the Bacardi-owned gin brand, today launched a crowdsourced canvas painted in real time by industrial robot arms based on input submitted by visitors to a branded website.
The initiative, #FindYourCanvas, features a 27 foot by 9 foot canvas housed at ROW DTLA, an outdoor mall in Los Angeles. From 11 a.m. ET today through Sept. 1, anyone 21 or older will be able to log into paintedbyeveryone.com, select a color and position on the canvas, then watch as their addition is made by two customized KUKA industrial robots, traditionally used in factories such as automotive plants.
Once the artwork is complete, it will be displayed at The Other Art Fair LA, taking place from Sept. 5-8. At the fair, each site visitor who contributed to the canvas will be credited on a digital screen adjacent to the painting. (You must log in via Google or Facebook to contribute a dot to the canvas.)
Bombay Sapphire is a new sponsor of the Los Angeles edition of The Other Art Fair, a global festival presented by the online gallery Saatchi Art, which provides a platform for emerging artists; next month’s fair will be the series’ fourth in Los Angeles.
Art collector and former advertising executive Charles Saatchi in 2010 granted Saatchi Art a perpetual license for the use of the Saatchi name in connection with its online art marketplace. The Leaf Group owns Saatchi Art and the fair.
In addition to displaying the crowdsourced painting, Bombay Sapphire also will let fair attendees design their own gin cocktails and will offer a program of participatory workshops and art-related activities taught by local creatives and artists. Bombay Sapphire also will offer fairgoers and individuals who make the crowdsourced painting free, three-month subscriptions to the nearly 25,000 classes offered by Skillshare, the online learning platform.
Victoria Morris, Bombay Sapphire’s vp of global marketing, said the crowdsourced painting—developed by agency BBDO New York, creator of several of the gin’s previous arts-related programs, such as last year’s “Art in Progress” installation in Manhattan, which was a winner in Adweek’s Experiential Awards—grew out of research done earlier this summer, in partnership with the Leaf Group, of 11,000 individuals across North America.
The research found that 90% of respondents expressed a desire to spend more time pursuing creative and artistic activities, 56% said their jobs do not fulfill their creative needs, and 96% said they would take classes to learn new creative skills if cost weren’t an issue.
Morris also said the crowdsourced initiative is aimed primarily at 25- to 34-year-old North American consumers who consider themselves “very creative” and seek out “all things that are new and far from ordinary.” Bombay Sapphire hopes the initiative will help its consumers “embrace their own self-expression,” she added.
Josh Goodman, vice president and account director at BBDO New York, said the agency is “really excited about this.” The agency will be creating a video showing the progress and results of the crowdsourced project. “There are thousands of potential ways this thing can come to life,” Goodman said.
