full interview_pindar van arman_2.mp4
Pindar van Arman [00:00:00] This is one of my most important assistants, Corinne.
Speaker 2 [00:00:02] I'm so hyper.
Pindar van Arman [00:00:03] Van Arman, okay. And she's, you know, like, since it's really important for me to work on portraits and loved ones, she's always the best assistant. You help me out with, you always pose when I need portraits. And I can show the process here with one photo shoot she did. I don't know, how old were you, like four? Okay, so this painting started off with Corinne posing for hundreds of photos and being very patient about it and I feed into the neural networks and train the neural networks to try and find the patterns behind her face and you can see them right there thinking through. Then after that I start comparing the neural networks to the the history of art I've made and also the I have like 24 algorithms that run and try and see the inspiration of painting her, and then paint them like they painted paintings in the past. And probably the biggest algorithm would be right around here. It starts painting, and as the robot's making brushstrokes, it's constantly taking photos of the painting, of the canvas, and using those photos to decide what to do next on the canvas. And that's called a feedback loop. First time I heard about feedback loops was from artist Paul Clay. And what's interesting about that is, artist Paul clay was an artist that describe the artistic. Process, the creative process, is an artist makes some brushstrokes out of canvas, steps back, see what those brushstroke are doing, and then makes more brushstroks. And the reason I say it's interesting to me I learned about feedback loops from him is because you always hear about feedback loop in computer science, but I learned about it from an artistic standpoint, so it makes me think a lot about how much to create a process is an algorithm. And yeah, that's, I just explained one of the primary. I explained actually just two of the primary algorithms, one are generative adversarial networks that study photo shoots and come up with new imagery, and the other is the fact that the robot's constantly using its own painting as feedback. And here's the finished portrait.
Speaker 2 [00:02:07] You might want to get a little bit on that screen. We'll do that afterwards. Sure, sure. All right. And Mary, sorry, just if you wouldn't mind.
Pindar van Arman [00:02:15] And then I was thinking, oh, and here children never have gods, so I asked Corinne how much she liked this, and she is so beautiful, and doesn't like the fact that there's an eyeball on the side of her head, but it was the robot that did it, not me, so she's come to accept it. But can I show them the painting you did when you were really young? The one that's right over there. So this is a gorgeous portrait that Corinne made. It's a self-portrait made with the augmented creativity of the robot. So Kryn did a drawing, and then the robot finished her drawing up like this. And this is when you were around three or four.
Speaker 2 [00:02:59] Do you remember that?
Pindar van Arman [00:03:04] But we have pictures of you doing it, so I have to refresh your memory. It's been great.
Speaker 2 [00:03:22] How long did it take you to develop this concept? I mean, what was the... Just run us through through it.
Pindar van Arman [00:03:27] Oh, all right, let me put this debris somewhere. It was like Halloween decorations. I started on the first robots around when my first son was born. So it's been gradually developing this for about 15 years. It's pretty organic. I keep on putting, actually more, Dante's almost 18. I've been working on this for 18 years. It's gradual, organic, it's grown organically.
Speaker 2 [00:04:03] Yeah, but it just, like, had just come to you? I mean, how did that...
Pindar van Arman [00:04:06] Oh, it's just started, the robot started as a simple, the robot is a simple assistance to the first algorithms were it, what do you call it? I'm worried that this is getting the outside out. So let me move, you sit over here so I can sit more over here.
Speaker 2 [00:04:23] Okay, we'll respond.
Pindar van Arman [00:04:24] Oh, it was fine. Sorry. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 [00:04:25] The front's not bothering me. No, it's fine. I can deal with the sun. I got it.
Pindar van Arman [00:04:29] Oh no no no, I was worried about getting this, that we're in a garage.
Speaker 2 [00:04:32] Oh, you ought to see it. Okay. You ought to.
Pindar van Arman [00:04:35] All right, so the first algorithms were really simple. They were like paint by, you know, color by numbers and connect the dots. And so like the early AI was super simple. Didn't even, I wouldn't even call it AI as much as procedural programming. I would give it a bunch of dots and I would tell it to pick up a paint brush and dip it in a color and drag it from dot to dot. And that was okay, but then I started realizing I could make it better than that, smarter than that. And so At first, I would add algorithms that would help out with the color. I use this algorithm called k-means clustering to find the primary colors or the best colors in the canvas and paint those. So it was like a step above just paint by numbers. And then, and just over the years, every six months to a year, I'd make one more improvement. The big improvement, my favorite one, was around 2008 or 2009, I forget. I added a camera so it could watch what it was doing and react to what it's doing and do those feedback loops where. Makes a mark, sees what the marks does, and then makes the next mark based on how the painting's going. It's been doing that for about the last ten, twelve years. Another big advance was like deep learning came around around, it's been around for a while, but it got really, really good around 2017 or 18. And that's when I started using GANs to imagine things. I really think that that's what machines began to learn to do something very similar to dreaming, something very to imagining and being creative. Like, while I don't think that a robot will be an artist anytime soon, I think that machines already are creative, and that sometimes is a controversial thing to say, but it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2 [00:06:18] What does that mean? What does it mean that the machines are created? What does...
Pindar van Arman [00:06:21] It means that when I say a machine is creative, it can solve problems in an intelligent way, not a brute force way. So, you know, a brute-force way would be, you just try every iteration of something and because you're a machine, you solve it. A creative way is to do something a little more intelligent about it. You know, just try different things, see what works, and when something works, go with it.
Speaker 2 [00:06:43] So you don't really think of, when you think of what you do here, you really, how much of it is machine knowledge and what is you? Is there a percentage? How do you work that out?
Pindar van Arman [00:06:53] I mean everything in this generative process is me but this robot does make enough independent esthetic decisions that it will complete entire paintings with no input from me, just based on what I have trained it to do. And some of them are quite dramatic and beautiful, like I think that one there, one of them, the one on the bottom there is completely machine done. I'm looking up here. There's a couple that are 99% machine created, like that one right there, this one right here behind Corinne. So it's a varying scale of how creative it is.
full interview_pindar van arman_3.mp4
Speaker 1 [00:00:00] So it's changed.
Speaker 2 [00:00:01] Since we were here a while back.
Pindar van Arman [00:00:03] Yeah, with patient input, it's like, I have a way that my kids like to use it, but my kids are like experts, so like we're working with patients and we find some of them just get, some of em get confused by the UI, so we change the UI. Another one, a therapist here had a great idea, is that it would be much easier if it was paint by numbers, so we turned it into a paint by number scheme, and now the patients can paint by numbers doing their portraits, and we just keep on, we improve it with every patient. We improve it a lot based on what the patient's input is.
Speaker 1 [00:00:37] So what would you say, we were here about a year and a half ago, what would say has been the biggest development?
Pindar van Arman [00:00:45] The biggest developments, the realization that paint-by-numbers is really popular with the children, because it just takes that level of abstraction down, they're familiar with it. So they're like, oh, it's paint- by-numbers, but with a robot arm. And that's kind of neat. I didn't come up with that. I mean, I wouldn't have thought that would have been that simple of an idea. But that simple an idea made it much more enjoyable for a vast majority of the patients.
Speaker 1 [00:01:11] And the kids are enjoying it's a mixed bag.
Pindar van Arman [00:01:14] Mixed bag, mixed bag. Some really enjoy it, don't want to stop. Some have asked for it to come back and do it again. Others, one fell asleep. We told them we'd come back later that night if they needed help getting them to sleep. But yeah, it's mixed bag, you don't know what you're going to get. That's art though. It's like everyone has their different preferences.
Speaker 1 [00:01:41] But you sort of made it a regular. I think when we were here last time, it was kind of intermittent. It seems like it's on a schedule now.
Pindar van Arman [00:01:50] Yeah, every every Wednesday I'm here setting it up and working on it. And then if we get a special request, I'll come in for another special request. So it's pretty regular now.
Speaker 1 [00:02:00] And that works well with your own life and schedule. And it's something you look forward to. It's another part of your artwork.
Pindar van Arman [00:02:08] It's nice, I don't schedule. So I come in on regular and on Wednesdays, and I block it out. I don't schedule any of my regular Art World meetings or drama. And so it's my day to just do art. So I really like it actually. It's my break in the middle of the week. So now that Juan has collaborated with the robot and painted on the tablet, the robot's gonna paint all day. It could not keep up with how fast he was doing the brush strokes. So now that Juan has collaborated with the robot and given it a bunch of strokes, the robot couldn't keep up with him. It's going to paint all day long. And so I usually come back and in my studio I watch and make sure everything goes right. And what it's doing is basically doing an autocomplete. The same way Google's AI autocompletes our search terms, this robot is going to take Juan's strokes and autocomplete his self-portrait. It is going take about 12 hours.
Speaker 1 [00:03:05] And Juan can see this as well if he chose to, right?
Pindar van Arman [00:03:08] Yeah, this is on a feed from Cook's children. They have the camera above the robot, and Juan can watch it from his room. Or eventually the plans are to broadcast it for anyone to watch. It's kind of relaxing, so I always end up watching my robots for a long time.
Speaker 1 [00:03:28] It's a nice picture, too. He's smiling. I don't know, there's something sweet about it.
Pindar van Arman [00:03:32] Yeah, he was a great kid. It was really fun to paint with him today. So and Dr. Perry is lucky enough to present him with the canvas tomorrow morning and get the reaction. I usually hear back from Dr. Perry about how that goes.
Speaker 1 [00:03:52] Did you think that you would be spreading joy like this to kids? It's probably not on your original plan for life.
Pindar van Arman [00:04:00] That's fun. It's uh, it's it's interestingly is like, you know as as started for the tech as I can make do that I could do this technically but The more fun part was like realizing that I could be there with the art therapist I'm not licensed art therapist by any means or I don't even know what I'm doing But it does feel like you're doing a little art therapy with the kids and that's really nice and it's of all the artistic Things I do in all my art projects. This is the most relaxing of them because there's no expectations The kids always love it. There's never any complaints. The worst thing that might happen is one time a kid fell asleep during the session, but he was tired. Who knows what he'd been going through. Even then it was a great experience just meeting these kids and working with them.
Speaker 1 [00:04:49] Have you been working with the kids in the work group? Sorry. Just wanted to see how it went.
Speaker 2 [00:04:56] Okay, I want to go close now. Get a little bit closer.
Pindar van Arman [00:05:00] Oh, I can re-answer that. The kid's falling asleep story doesn't make sense to me anyway.
Speaker 1 [00:05:03] People have already mentioned it and Scott mentioned it with a kind of wink in his eye. What I'm interested in is, okay, let's say it's been a couple of years that this has been a project of yours. What has working with Spike Alangel and working with the kids, has it changed any of your ideas about technology?
Pindar van Arman [00:05:27] So, you know, there's this big fear in the AI space, and you see some artists, like, I get hate mail because I'm working with AI, and they're like, it's hard enough that competing in the art world now I have to compete with AI. And I think that's the wrong message and the wrong way of thinking about things. I think AI is gonna help all of us do things better. In this case, it's helping children, you know as young as four years old, paint portraits that have a likeness to themselves. So AI is. Is amping up and helping people be creative far beyond what they were capable of before AI. I think that's gonna apply to everyone. I don't think it's gonna hurt any artist. I think it just gonna make any artist that decides to use it that much better. I mean, I certainly can't paint as well as me painting with my robots. And I would never call my robots artists because they're not artists. They're just really, really cool tools that help me make art.
Speaker 1 [00:06:23] What about the idea that you approach things from a fairly sophisticated technological point of view, because you've worked around it for a long time, and then you run into a kid, and the kids have different ideas about technology and different user experiences, and just curious whether you've learned anything, whether it's patience, or whether it is like you can't plan it, or whatever it is. Yeah. Thank you, you know.
Pindar van Arman [00:06:47] But one of the things I learned from the kids is that art is all about the emotions. None of these kids are at all concerned or impressed by any technical specs. Because the robot has some impressive technical specs, I've never heard a kid care about it once. They just care that they're doing their own self-portrait. They get to paint it, they get to have some time, their parents are impressed with it. It's the emotional side that it keys me in on the fact that art is about emotions and AI art should be more about the human condition. Than it is about the technology, the AI technology. It's sort of like what I get from it. It took me, I'm an AI artist and I've been doing AI for almost 20 years now. Wow, yeah. And it took me 10, 12 years to realize that no one cares about the the technology. They just care about what you can do with the technology and the impact it has on the human condition and emotions and storytelling. So it took a while to realize that. And this is. Another data point that's helped me realize that.
Speaker 1 [00:07:48] I guess that's true about if you look at any art, you know, people, if they like the impressionist or wasn't, because, oh, they're using oil paints outdoors, you know, it's like, okay.
Pindar van Arman [00:08:00] Yeah, I know it's, I think that's gonna what's, yeah. I mean, AI art is going through a little bit of a change. Now it used to be about the technique and it used be limited to artists that were good at AI. But now it's going more into an emotional direction. Artists that are good at telling stories with AI or hitting high notes of emotions with AI. I don't know, it's changing slightly. Now what I'm curious about is like, you know, good at music and other art forms. I use, I admit, I use ChatGP to help me write. And I'm just, I'm thinking it's gonna, I don't know where it's going to go, but I'm thinkin' it's gunna change a lot of things. I'm most curious about what it's goanna do music-wise. A little off topic, but I mean, it's very simple to make, it's a very simple right now to make a, to match up, I think recently someone did a Drake song and it sounded a lot, I don't wanna be quoted on this, cause I don't remember if it was a Drake Song or not. It was a fake Drake song, yeah. So someone made it a fake-Drake song, I listened to it, it sounded like Drake, but did it have the emotional, did it inspire me as much as an artist that I love and listen to? I don't know, I don't know where it's gonna go. It'll be interesting.
Speaker 1 [00:09:14] We have one of our stories which is this composer, this woman who's Asian-American and says, you know, and maybe this is kind of, this could be the conservative viewpoint, you know, the traditionalist viewpoint is she says that I don't think AI will ever affect me the way sitting under my grandma's tree in her compound back in Haiti and her scene to me will ever effect me.
Pindar van Arman [00:09:38] Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1 [00:09:39] I'm missing the motion.
Pindar van Arman [00:09:42] Like I, you know, one of the things I go for, like, I go a little bit of imperfection. That's why I like painting with robots, because there's drip and there's paint and it's imperfect. It's because the digital world in AI is too perfect. And like, it's these small imperfections that make things more human. You know, like when AI does, for example, when AI does renditions of faces, it's actually escaped the uncanny valley, but for a long time it was in the uncannily valley where it was so symmetrical. So perfect that it looked monstrous to us, and that's something that the perfection was just too much. I'm a digital artist, it's very easy to get perfect digital images, but I like to step back and then turn those digital images into physical paintings with robots, and the imperfections that come from the brush strokes are what I find interesting. Just more emotional, more real, more unique, more handcrafted.
Speaker 4 [00:10:46] You've been in digital arts for a long time. Yeah. And you've seen all the changes that have taken place. Yeah. In digital art. And did you ever imagine that something like this, this sort of therapy could ever be used? Was that ever in your mind, or how did that happen? Thank you very much.
Pindar van Arman [00:11:05] I have to credit Dr. Perry with that. Dr. Perry just had the, you know, he connected the dots. I did it as like a fun month demo with him for to raise awareness for National Epilepsy Month. But then Dr. Perry said, hey, there's something bigger here. Kids might really like this or there might be kids that can't do the traditional art therapy program that might like this. And so I have to credit him for making that connection. And just both of us, I guess, I would credit for being so persistent to just like push it to this point.
Speaker 1 [00:11:35] In a lot of trial and error sense.
Pindar van Arman [00:11:37] Yeah, yeah, this is the third year of the project. So a lot of trial and error, a lot seeing what the kids liked and didn't liked, then taking like some of the things that the kids like. We had to like, you know, work with. I don't want to go into this because it's the legal stuff, yeah. And it might be misinterpreted, criticized in the hospital when they've been nothing but great. They just take time.
Speaker 1 [00:12:02] Yeah, that's that's part of our one of our themes across all our stories is trial and error Failure is central to everything it does and we all think when if something comes out with a larger piece of music
Pindar van Arman [00:12:14] Let me rephrase it, I was going to say the hospital takes forever on these legal things, but that might be misinterpreted as a criticism, because I think it's good, they're doing their best to protect the kids, right? Okay, so we've been working on this for three years, a lot of trial and error, we'd have trial runs, we'd find out what kids liked and didn't like, we would find out what art therapists and occupational therapists liked and did not like, and we zeroed in that people like to make portraits. They they like to paint by numbers They like the interface that we have and and every time we have a sitting we ask for inputs And I try and get them in it within the next couple months, so it's just like iteration after iteration after iteration improvement after improvement after improvement and and not most of them aren't technical improvements most of more improvements on how we Take and deal with the patients and how they like be worked worked with and how do you like to work? And stuff I had no idea until I started working with the patients.
Speaker 1 [00:13:15] Which is kind of cool for you to have that opportunity. I know you're doing all the work, but you're a guy sitting here in the studio, surrounded by equipment and technology, and you're actually having to deal with people in a certain way that you might not otherwise do, now that you don't deal with the people, of course.
Pindar van Arman [00:13:33] Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it isn't interesting. It is interesting because you're dealing with children that are just really fascinated by the technology, but they don't necessarily understand it beyond that they just wanna use it and they think it's cool. So it's fun.
Speaker 2 [00:13:54] Where do you see something like this, given all the experiences you've gotten into this? Where do see this in like 10 years? Using new tools, but also, where would you like to go with this? As an emotional response, or helping these kids? Besides, using the art as a kind of technique, a hidden technique.
Pindar van Arman [00:14:18] Yeah, it's like, you know, my kids have fun painting with me, so I just think we're going to see a lot more cooperative robots in our lives, right? Not stuff that replace anything we do, but we might have a cooperative robot that sits down and does a painting with us, you now, like instead of prints, like, hey, robot, draw me a Disney character, and the robot will draw a Disney that a kid then fills in the color. You know, these co-robots might help us with dishes. I think they're coming. I don't know how fast, but I think that this AI hidden inflection point this year, specifically a couple months ago with ChatGPT and people realizing what ChatGpT can do. And it's like, you know, for example, I'll give one anecdote. I had to make an improvement to the robot and I estimated it would be two or three days of work. I was like, I will write this with Chatgp that I'll see if Chatgpt can help me and CHECH EBT reduced. The amount of time to an hour. So instead of spending three days on something, I got it done in an hour, and I was like, oh my goodness, everyone that uses this is gonna have their productivity increase tenfold. So, and there's not a task I do right now that I don't go to ChatGPT to try and speed it up. And so that's why I think we're in an inflection point. I think as more and more people realize this, it's just gonna skyrocket.
Speaker 1 [00:15:48] Okay, good, that was good. It was really funny, I listened to your talk, and I was like, a year ago, there was no chat GBT, right? In our previous interview, you know, when we were here, it wasn't a thing. So the fact that now it's like part of your life, it's just very funny.
Pindar van Arman [00:16:03] Yeah, I know, I was like...
Speaker 1 [00:16:05] Is that your time magazine?
Pindar van Arman [00:16:07] Yeah, well no, I lost out to Chad GPT, I'm irritated, but almost on the cover. How did you even know about the time?
Speaker 1 [00:16:15] I knew about the cover. I didn't realize it there. No, because we were checking in on you. You were doing our research. So did you know that he did the cover?
Pindar van Arman [00:16:24] They hired me for the cover, but then when it came, they had two stories. One was about ChatGPT, one was about AI and artificial creativity, and ChatGpT.
Speaker 1 [00:16:35] Yeah, well, that's-
Pindar van Arman [00:16:35] one out, so I'm irritated, but I know, right? Like I lost, but you know, how often do you get a chance at being, yeah, this is the, this was done for the cover and they put it in here instead. But you can imagine, it's a time across there, right, because, and I'm actually, I'll be, you know between, a little irritated, this was not meant to be a painting without time across the top, this isn't big, it just has no, it has no No, uh...
Speaker 1 [00:17:04] It's lost its reason for being.
Pindar van Arman [00:17:07] Yeah, it's got a lot of white space in the top for no reason, but I'll take it, there it is.
Speaker 1 [00:17:15] If you ever go to the Northern Rockwell Museum, it has all his, you know, when he first did the paintings for the covers, first he did as a painting, and then they sent it off to be reproduced. You know, so he had paint with special colors that would work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So he would always have to leave the space for the logo. Yeah
Pindar van Arman [00:17:32] Look at this junk. What kind of cover is that? Where you could have had that greatness. Anyway, that would have been, it would have gone to my head. That would have the end of my, yeah.
full interview_pindar van arman_scott perry_2.mp4
Pindar van Arman [00:00:01] I didn't know Scott, but I guess we met because you're buying some art, right? Some jazz art. Jelly Roll Morton. An old painting of mine. A large one. Probably one of the largest paintings I've ever made. And one of weird coincidences of, well we met and one of this weird coincidence of this world is he had the art and he had this idea and he's like, you know, what If we did this for November, was it Epilepsy Awareness Month? And he mentioned that we could probably do it at the hospital. At the very same time, I was working on another project to make an art creation factory here in the Fort Worth area. And I was like, wow, that's two projects popping up at the same time in the same part of the country. I was, like, maybe we should move. And so Bonnie and I decided to move there. And I let Bonnie pick the place we're gonna live. And in a strange coincidence, I think Dr. Perry here is like 10 houses down that way. And every time I drive to work or the hospital, I look into his foyer and see my beautiful artwork. Right there.
Scott Perry [00:01:02] Right there in the front window.
Pindar van Arman [00:01:05] So that's how we met in a bunch of coincidences and brought this together.
Scott Perry [00:01:10] I was saying before, you know, what had happened is I bought that art originally and then you and I did not communicate, you now, I bought the art, it's up in my house and that was really it. And then I was thinking about this thing to do at the hospital and for whatever reason you had sent out a mass mailing from your cloud painter and I happened to on your mailing list. Or maybe it was crowd painter, but you were doing the crowd-sourced art, and I saw that and I was like, well, wait a minute, this would work in the hospital, this is exactly what I'm talking about, if people could log in and the kids could log-in and work together. And then I looked you up on, it linked to your Twitter, so I found you on Twitter and sent you an instant message and you were like, yeah, let's talk.
Pindar van Arman [00:01:59] Yeah, I actually, yeah.
Scott Perry [00:02:00] And then it went from Twitter IM to phone call to you moved down the street from me.
Pindar van Arman [00:02:13] I just wanted to talk about a robot, that's all I wanted to talk about. All right, so I'm a little creepy like that. So yeah, I actually remember all that and I remember it was the first mailing I'd done and you were one of the first responses so that was really cool. That's wild. And here we are. And then just a lot of the ideas are coming from our therapy department, Scott here. I think it's turning out to be this really big collaborative effort. Which is seeing how we can make this work for all the kids at the hospital.
Speaker 3 [00:02:51] So how is it gonna work? How is this guy gonna work here? You can just talk to him.
Pindar van Arman [00:02:56] Oh, OK. Well, there's going to be a bunch of touchscreen tablets. And children are going to take control of the robot and even soon paint along with the robot. So the robot will be this augmented creativity or augmented created assistant.
Scott Perry [00:03:17] I think those are like the, I don't know if I call it the basement level, but the foundation level of the things we think it could do. We talked about its potential for, I'm a neurologist, right, so I deal with children who have all kinds of different cognitive developmental motor capabilities and to be able to imagine a kid could ask for a certain amount of assistance from the robot to maybe help finish a painting or to contribute to a painting. And some may want no help at all, they want to just do it all themselves and some they want. They may want to help them more or, you know, in our rehabilitation unit, for example, we have kids with spinal cord injuries or kids with neuromuscular diseases that are, you know, very, can be very creative but simply don't have the strength to paint. Is there a way we could use the robot? Verbal command or something like that to help with painting. I mean, I think there's all kinds of possibilities like the the painting this what we're talking about like coloring book or painting with a robot that's like the ground level. There's so many things I think we can do with time.
Speaker 3 [00:04:38] Um, just tell me, just introduce yourself and tell me who you are. Hi. Uh... Go ahead and just speak to me, don't worry about the camera.
Pindar van Arman [00:04:46] Oh, Pinder van Armen, AI artist, crypto artist, work with painting robots.
Scott Perry [00:04:53] Scott Perry, neurologist, epileptologist.
Speaker 3 [00:05:00] And so when you get together here, you're living a few houses away. What do you come over and talk about?
Scott Perry [00:05:08] Uh, well, I guess primarily about the robot. That's generally at least how the conversation starts is what we're doing at the hospital.
Speaker 3 [00:05:17] And if you could start, if you can just say we talk about it just so we know what you're talking about.
Scott Perry [00:05:20] Yeah, yeah. So we generally talk about what's going on with the robot at the hospital. So, you know, that thing's installed. We're doing projects throughout the week. I'm the one that's usually, obviously, at the hospital. Pindar comes up there, but I'm there all the time. So I kind of try to come let him know what went right, what went wrong, maybe what improvements I think we could make, things that seem to work for me, and then he tells me why they can or can't work or oftentimes there's a better way to do it. That just makes sense with the the code that he's written since he knows it so well yeah we just you know create that list of items to check off
Speaker 3 [00:06:01] Go ahead, please.
Pindar van Arman [00:06:02] Yeah, one of the things we've talked about is we set up the priorities of what's worked in the last couple of weeks with all the improvements, because it works as is now, but it's never worked in a hospital environment, and I'm learning about all these special needs, like for example, like these patients which are being put on these strict regimens and have to do stuff constantly for the doctors, they have no choice. I've learned through my experience here that choice is really important for them, because when they're doing art therapy, that's the only time they have choice. And so that totally changes the way I have to make this robot. I can no longer say, this is how you have to use it. I have worry about what are the choices I have to give these kids.
Scott Perry [00:06:40] Kids when they use it. Yeah. The conversation we had early on was about the colors, right, because, I mean, a lot of what's behind us is very colorful, but some of the portraits he was working on at the time are, you know, just kind of a shade of the same kind of color, you know, and we're like, we want the rainbow for the kids, and he was like, yeah, the rainbow's kind of hard to work with, like, you know, that color doesn't really go well with that color, and I remember I said, the Pindar. Well, some kids put peaches in ranch dressing, like I don't care if they go together, that's just what they want to do. That's exactly what you said. That's what we're going to do, we've got to figure out how to get the colors because they're going use them.
Pindar van Arman [00:07:17] So there's some challenging things like that that we're getting into.
Speaker 3 [00:07:21] How did Dr. Perry convince you to do this?
Pindar van Arman [00:07:24] It was just such a good idea. And then lots of lies about that. No, I was going to say, hold up. I don't think that's actually how it worked. I want to cut that. Let me start that over, because I don't want that joke in there. He just got in touch, and it was such a good idea, I said, oh my goodness, I have to do this. And I just want a contest. And I was like, this is where the money from that contest is going. And then he's put a lot of his own money in. He's going to be shy about that, but his personal involvement is really pushing this through.
Scott Perry [00:07:53] That's what I was gonna say, like how it went down, like I was not, all I was expecting when I messaged him was that he might let us use his crowd source painting application to do a painting during the month of November, during Epilepsy Awareness Month. That's all I checking out to see if that was even possible. And in that first 30 minute conversation we had, he was like. Oh, that's a great idea. Why don't I just give you a robot, basically? And I was like, well, okay. Sure, sounds great. I was, like, I'll be back in touch.
Pindar van Arman [00:08:34] And everyone we tell about this has to get involved, like the manufacturer of the robot. This is their favorite project. They pushed us right to the front and got us normally. There's a month-long, month-in-month-long wait, and they just sent it. They just sent the robot, always asking how it's going. So, let's sort of...
Scott Perry [00:08:50] And then the ball started rolling. And so then I had to like back up what I said we were gonna do. So then I have to go to the administration of the hospital and have the conversation of, hey, so I've got this idea. We're gonna put a robot in the hallway that paints. You can imagine the conversation.
Pindar van Arman [00:09:13] And the hurdles that we had to go through, I don't even know, but I imagine if you're impressed with the AI behind this robot, I think even more impressive is just like everything we've gone through to get the robot in that hallway, to convince everyone that this is not gonna be a problem. So it's almost like one of my favorite artists is Christo and he used to drape things with cloth. And he would always talk about, the biggest part of the process was getting a... A city to say, okay, you can wrap a cloth around this island. The whole administrative and bureaucratic process. And Scott here has mastered that. It's just really got everyone on board.
Scott Perry [00:09:49] Well, I think it's, I always say the hospital I work at is very forward-thinking, you know, and I think this is one of those examples, right? I mean, I didn't give them much more detail other than, we've got this robot, it's going to paint, kids can work with it, I mean it can really build out over time and be pretty awesome, and they went with that, and I mean you saw today when you were there, I meant they put that thing on what we call our main street. That is the main hallway of the hospital that everybody's gonna walk by because they wanted it to be a place where, you know, everybody could could see it and see what it does. So, um, yeah, they've they've invested their time. They come along, uh, gingerly, uh you know sometimes, but they're there. They're in it. I think it's gonna be great. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we've got I don't know how long ago, like I don't know what the end point is, like when have you used up all the possibilities of what it can do. I think that, as I said, the first things are going to be just simple things to show it works. We've got the camera in now, we've got tablets connected to it so kids can paint on the tablet and the robot can do that, that's great. After that, then we bring in the AI technology hopefully to help the robot really collaborate with the kid. And to... To add to what they're doing, you know, participate. And then do we take it to the next level and maybe not just participate, but help to a degree, however much degree they want it to help them paint. I just think there's, and we'll do those and we will come up with like the next thing you could do. I just feel like we'll see kids working with it and figure out something else we can do to make it even better.
Pindar van Arman [00:11:44] Yeah, I'm looking forward to what we don't know like for a kid to like start doing something like I didn't even think of doing that And that could be a you know become a program in and of itself, so I'm look forward to what we learned from this like Just this is this audience and that's gonna be really fun. We were talking
Scott Perry [00:12:03] yesterday about taking, you know, I'll use my resources in the biomedical half to take a kid who's in the hospital getting an EEG all week as part of their epilepsy workup and then transforming that EEG into something that's then translated to the robot painting. Like here's what your EEG over the week looks like. Take that home with you. I mean, they're sure.
Speaker 3 [00:12:32] You may have just answered my next question a little bit, but I just want to play the part of the skeptic and ask, kids in art, I totally get it. Why not just give a kid a crayon or a paintbrush? Why go through everything that you're working on?
Pindar van Arman [00:12:48] There's a lot of answers that, I don't know all the answers, but I know some, one thing we're talking about, we're, I dunno if I can mention that Amazon's interested, but we're talkin' about some voice-activated robotic uses for the children that can't use a crayon or a pencil. And, you know, every time I mention, I talk to them, they're like, when can we do it? And they just wanna, they wanna hook, I'll say this, they want to hook Alexa up to this robot to have this robot painting for children that want it. So that'll put them on the spot to actually do it now that I've said it. And it's going to be in this, so.
Scott Perry [00:13:20] Well, and there's, you know, other reasons to do it is because there's ways to make our current process better, right? We've got a couple art therapists. We have 454 beds in the hospital, so they can't be working with every single kid. And the robot will not either, but it's yet one more set of hands that could work with the kids. You know, kids might start painting and then they have to go off to a test or do whatever else, right? For that art therapist to circle back and come back and get restarted with them later on, it doesn't work real well, right. So, hey, just pick up where you left off with the robot when you come back, you know. So I think it has some advantages to kind of improve the current process. And, you know, it's... I mean, medicine's all about technology and finding better ways to do things. We're using robots all the time in the operating room. Why not use them somewhere else? Why not using them in heart therapy? Like, the first thing I think about is, again, the kid. You know, if we get to a point that it can augment or really assist someone who has the cognitive abilities but not the physical abilities, I think that that is, that's probably like the biggest. Step I can see it doing for a kid because it's really, I mean just like in rehab we use robotic exoskeletons to help them say walk again, right? You're doing the same concept here, it's their creativity, you're giving them a way to let that creativity out by using the robot. So I think that's probably the biggest one I can think of.
Speaker 4 [00:15:09] Pindar, as you travel this road with Scott six, eight, ten, twelve months from now, how many iterations, where do you see Spicalangelo able to do what more?
Pindar van Arman [00:15:22] I think I think an iteration every three months and then in culmination of November is when we really get serious because of Epilepsy Awareness Month. So I think we have something pretty fleshed out AI wise for next year. And then beyond that I mean we're just like take cues from where it goes in the here to come.
Speaker 4 [00:15:44] So what do you know between now and next November?
Pindar van Arman [00:15:49] Well between now and next November to start making a lot of art with the kids and seeing what works and what doesn't work And then follow the lead of what works. What's the most fun? For the different population of kids too, you know from age groups Or I guess the age was very from everything from like toddlers to teenagers Yeah, so maybe we find that teenagers like using it in one particular way to make Expressionistic portraits and then toddlers just want a free form They like taking the brush and scribbling colors all over the page, or the canvas. I don't know yet. I imagine it will be interesting to find out.
Scott Perry [00:16:24] I think we'll see what direction that goes when we start taking it to the kids. The first two months has been me using it, trying to figure out, you know, how does it work? Because I wanted to understand every step that takes place before I hand it off to a volunteer or the art therapist. You know, I don't want to be the guy that says, you figure it out, it's easy. I would do it myself, so I know exactly how it's done. And try to work those kinks out, and I think we have. And so now, the next part is to take it to the kids and work the kinks our there and hear them say, eh, I didn't like doing this, that was boring, or, oh, I really like that piece, and so then we can capitalize on the stuff that really works well and simplify or get rid of the stuff that doesn't work well. Make it better. Kids are pretty young for giving. Nah, it's fine. They're fine. They are unforgiving, right? So I tell you the story. I saw this kid the other day who came to see me from Tennessee. Her dad, believe it or not, found me on Twitter, follows me on Twitter and came to me for an epilepsy evaluation, right. So I go in to see her because she's in the hospital getting her work up and I walk in and she said, first thing she says to me is, you're not as tall as I thought you'd be. As a kid? Yeah. No guile. Well, thanks. I'm not really sure what to say and I can't do anything to fix that, so thanks for coming. That's my daughter as well. Whenever, yeah. Very straightforward. They will tell us the truth, so that's fine. That's good quality for them. Yeah, it's fine, yeah, she also told me that she thought I would have white hair and I said, well, I thought I'd have hair. It is what it is.
full interview_pindar van arman_scott perry_4.mp4
Speaker 1 [00:00:00] All right, so obviously it was really heartwarming to see what happened here today and yesterday. The whole process is great. Beyond that, what does this mean sort of medically and therapeutically?
Scott Perry [00:00:16] I think we saw with Oscar, right? He does therapy every single day, and this was a real break from his usual therapy to do something else. I think he clearly had fun. I think is like super interested in what it's doing. I think when we went down there, I think, he's told me he's gonna be an artist, a builder, and a scientist, all from. You know, maybe he had those dreams beforehand, but my goodness, he kept coming up with more things he was going to do after working with that robot, so that was pretty cool. You know for me just in these couple cases, right, I mean I've been very involved with them, right. So that is, as a doctor, is fun because I get to, I guess, experience what the art therapists experience all the time when they go in and work with the kids. So I mean, that was fun, but I think, yeah, it's just a good experience to see. Oscar and Juan get to do something that's a little different than what they do every day and how interested they were in it and how excited they were and how proud they are of their final products when they see what they were able to do with the robot.
Speaker 1 [00:01:22] And why is that important medically?
Scott Perry [00:01:25] Well, I think it shows them, you know, for Oscar, again, you know, I it shows him, he probably already knew, frankly, but all the things that he could do. I mean, he just, he felt like he was accomplishing something. I think Juan, obviously, was really impressed with what he was able to do, you now, and so after all these days, you know in the hospital, having to be treated and things you couldn't do because of, you know, whatever you're here for, to be able to. Do those things, see a finished product accomplish things, I think that's really cool for them.
Pindar van Arman [00:01:59] I'm not an art therapist, but I've learned from the art therapists here, it's like one of the things you're trying to do is get them, one of them is as simple as moving their muscles and you know just like doing actions and I think we saw that today where you know there was a touching moment where Oscar was tired but he's like, I'm going to keep on painting and he just kept on painting, kept on moving and that's a, I think that's a good session but I, yeah, it just looked right. Yeah, I agree. Thank you very much.
Speaker 4 [00:02:25] I'm good, how are you?
Speaker 1 [00:02:33] So, you know, you deal as a medical innovator, you're dealing with all sorts of new products, but this robot was not designed to help you as a doctor, you know, but you're using it. It tells what is it about that sort of, is it because any tool will work, you'll take anything?
Scott Perry [00:02:53] I don't know if I'll take anything, but you're always looking for ways to... Help the kids, to interact with the kids. I mean, I don't really care necessarily if it improves, you know, reaches one of our therapeutic goals. If it gives them something that's fun to do and makes them, you think about something other than being in the hospital, then it's worth it, it's fun. Yeah, it is fun for me too. I mean I'm in the hospitals all day long, I like to do something different every now and then too, right?
Speaker 1 [00:03:29] And what about the fact that it's a robot? You worked with robots. And before you started working together, the robot had a particular artistic purpose for you. And now it's sort of doing something else.
Pindar van Arman [00:03:41] Yeah, I guess that's interesting. I always built my robots to be my assistants in my studio. And this is the case where it's actually the assistant of these children that are using it. So that's interested, seeing how people use it that's not me or that are not me, and I'm learning a lot from that. We're making a lot of changes. Almost every patients, we tweak it a little. Every single time we see it used, we change it just a touch. And that's been fun doing and learning from the children using it
Speaker 1 [00:04:09] So this is out of left field, this is my last question. One of our other stories is about, it's a product called Endeavor RX, and it is the first FDA approved video game to treat ADHD and like preteens, and it's just been approved for adults, okay? It's a video game. Nobody ever thought that video games were gonna be somehow therapeutic, you know, for medical purposes. What do you, I assume you don't know about, you've probably not heard about that product, but what, does medicine kind of need all the different inputs that are out there? I mean, that's kind of what we're trying to get at.
Scott Perry [00:04:48] Yeah, for sure. For sure. And I mean, there are other examples similar to that, that we use in neurorehab, like virtual reality kind of rehab, because I mean how long can you sit and walk on a treadmill? I mean it's boring, right? Kids need something to do. Kids can recover very well a lot of times. They are eager to get up and go do things, so giving them lots of modes and ways to do that. And especially ways that don't even feel like it's really therapy. It's just like doing what I enjoy doing super beneficial and very useful
Speaker 5 [00:05:28] Scott I have a question. Interacting with like somebody like Scott or both of these boys on an emotional level how does this make you a better doctor when that you kind of pierce that intimacy zone? Yeah. You're on one hand you're a father, a man, and also a medical doctor. How improve your, your profession.
Speaker 1 [00:05:56] Respond to me.
Scott Perry [00:05:57] Well, I think that's important with every patient I see outside of just doing the stuff with the robots, you know, and to be able to connect with the kids, to let them know that, yeah, I'm a doctor, but I'm your friend, I am here to help you, I help make you better. Not always here to come make you do tests that you don't want to do, or take things that you do not want to take, like I'm on your team, you now, and I think both of these kids we worked with, I mean, I day. They identified with that, right? And it makes me, obviously it makes me happy to know that they did. And it fills me up, right, to keep doing what I do.
Speaker 4 [00:06:41] Do you see a big future in this kind of thing? And this sort of, this kind of interaction with technology.
Scott Perry [00:06:48] I do, I don't see how we can't interact with technology, it's in everything we do every single day. You either embrace it and learn to work with it, or I suppose it will leave us behind.
Pindar van Arman [00:07:03] Yeah, I agree with that. I think more and more, like right now especially, we're just gonna start learning to collaborate with technology and specifically artificial intelligence and it's gonna make us all better at everything we do already. As you can see, we have children painting portraits with likeness, we're gonna just see that in every aspect of our lives coming soon.
