
Painting Music uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create music from live-painted drawings, in real time and unique for each performance. The production is a collaboration with AI engineers Dr. Starkey and Jack Caven from the University of Aberdeen.
Painting Music produces creative tools for audiences to explore AI’s limitations, encompassing performance & audience-interactive app, live talks and audio-visual installation centred around Ada Lovelace.

Photo credit Ray Interactive
We have the following products on offer:
Painting Music Canvas Capture: Live performance using Explainable, Green & Creative AI to create music from live painting..
Painting Music Sketch Pad: An audience-interactive App using Explainable, Green & Creative AI that allows audiences to create their own interactive ‘performance’ by creating musical scores from their drawings through the Painting Music software.
We provide workshops and talks on Ada Lovelace & AI.with our team AI Specialist, Software Engineer & Artist. Painting Music taps into the public’s fear – or excitement of AI and the change that this will bring to all facets of society. The production is centred around the question Is AI good or bad?
STEM/ art crossover Schools and Community Outreach: Painting Music particularly allows for the opportunity to reach out to schools and engage with community learning and development programmes to highlight women’s pioneering contributions and innovative achievements, especially in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and stimulate reflection upon AI’s limitations.

We recently completed a mini-tour with Scottish AI Alliance at the Scottish AI Summit in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Painting Music pays tribute to Ada Lovelace through a unique multifaceted audio-visual deliverance. The high-quality outputs foregrounding this significant female technological pioneer allow audiences to artistically explore AI’s application and impact on our world.
Photo credit – Aberdeen University May Festival.

Dr. Starkey’s research is focused on bridging the gap between humans and computers, and ensuring that the AI is fully explainable to the end user.

BSL Interpreter Elaine Campbell (Above)
Can artificial intelligence, a computer brain that is based on our own biological brains, replace a human? Is this a good idea? And what does this mean? What is artificial intelligence? To answer that question we firstly need to define what is ‘intelligence’. This is surprisingly difficult. Most explanations for intelligence are simply synonyms for the word intelligence like wisdom, cleverness, or being smart.

AI Developer Jack Caven and Paddy the Labrador
So is intelligence then the ability to learn? And learn in particular like a human? To take in some form of sensory input and to learn how to respond? An amoeba in sea water responds to light to determine where to swim to find food – do we consider this intelligent? In some ways amoebas are already more intelligent than even the most sophisticated form of artificial intelligence available today, as they are fully autonomous, make decisions on their own, grow and reproduce.
Painting Music was also transformed into a 20-minute film by filmmakers Albert Lucas and Kim Beveridge funded by Aberdeen City Council and Creative Scotland. With special thanks to videographer Calum McCready and voice-over performed by Shane Strachan.
The production shows close-ups of the artistic process and includes interviews with those involved in the production through live stage performance, film and a body of visual artwork. All music in Painting Music is created by AI from live painting.

Painting Music is a tool to develop a critical response on human-AI ecosystems with many finding the techniques compelling, disturbing, productive, and thought-provoking in equal measure.
Painting Music moves visual art as a traditionally static experience into a dynamic, interactive artform that is transformational, transient, and temporal.

A scene from the performance entitled The physical brain