A few murals in Croatia and a step forward in development.
Working with a prototype, Part 1 / Pula, Croatia; July 2019
We have this robot. Amazing sexy little robot called Albert. He is really good at translating art onto big walls and getting better at it with every mural we help him do. But there is no way around the fact that he is still a prototype. A long way from his first iterations and not far from a viable production model. But still a prototype. That brings all kinds of interesting challenges.
That is not our only prototype. The whole company, structure, and the way we are able to do things, in a sense — is a prototype. The uniqueness and character of our whole undertaking needs an innovative approach to how we can handle our projects. We have an opportunity to easily change what we see around us; or take a little time and effort to change the way people want to see the world around them.
My first journey in this context was our cooperation with Mindvalley in Pula last year. The founder of Mindvalley, Vishen Lakhiani, also one of our investors, decided to give four murals to the city of Pula, as a token of appreciation for being a good host for their Mindvalley University event.
It was not too hot when we arrived in Pula. We had a few days to catch the really hot heatwave. That heatwave would be the best description of our project in Pula, in my opinion. In all kind of different ways.
So, there are a few ways we can approach our work. In Pula, we had the opportunity to manage a really immersive creative campaign. We started out with a wall on King Tomislav Square, and when arriving on site, we did not have the artwork in place. In this case, this was okay.
In our production timeline, we have a couple of criteria, which we have to be really mindful of; one of those is the sourcing of the paint, and that brings up all kinds of different questions, always. One of which is “How ‘live’ can we be?” Meaning, how much time we can have between the confirmed artwork and printing. And that depends, really depends; mostly on location. In Pula, we had the privilege of being very much live, because we had 4 murals to do. So as our project manager was having daily discussions with the municipality to lock down the final artwork, and also communicating with the residents in the building to get the proper authorisation for the work to begin, we (the Ninjas) were running around and gathering all the paint within 600 km of Pula we could find.
It started with a mixed up order from our first source in Zagreb. One thing led to another which all ended up along the lines of us having around a few dozen cans of paint for each colour instead of dozens or so boxes of each. That is a profession specific irregularity which has happened more than once. There are cans of paint, 400ml per can and boxes of paint, 6 cans in a box. And sometimes, however hard we communicate the need for, lets say “6 boxes of red” to be ordered, we still get a box of 6 cans. The sense of size of the murals that we do, does not always translate well. The paint resellers are often in disbelief that someone would need as much paint as we do.
So the next closest source would be in Maribor, Slovenia. So we placed an order there. But since we had time to kill and over-the-border-order would have taken days to weeks to deliver, we took our car and delivered it ourselves. And after that run we were probably good, at least for the first print. So we had time to prepare the wall for printing and calibrate our robot with ease, as the days continually got hotter and hotter.
After the first print was locked, we had to deal with paint sourcing again, for the next ones. Since we had bought all the paint in Maribor, we needed another source. The next closest source would be Milan. So, that was our next trip. One day to Milan and the next morning back to Pula, with more than enough paint for all of our needs. It could sound like a nonsense thing to do, but the pros outweigh the cons in this situation. If the international transport would take days to weeks and cost a lot more than the gasoline for the trip, it makes sense and is actually productive way to kill time.
Overall, Europe is easy. Since the manufacturing of our specifically preferred paint is located in Barcelona, it is possible, with more or less difficult means, get the paint in a few days. Saying that, it is still not worth the risk, trouble and workload in most cases.
About the ‘liveness’ of our prints… So, we need the specific artwork to calculate the amount of paint needed, colour by colour. And then have it shipped to the location since local graffiti shops usually do not have the amount for our giant murals in stock. So, that takes time. From a few days to a couple of weeks. We were able to be ‘more live’ in Pula, because we had the opportunity to order paint in large amounts since we had 4 murals to do. We could risk the first painting to be whatever, as we had to source enough paint for several murals anyway. We could order extra in the beginning and use it for the next ones as we move along. And then restock step-by-step before the next prints.
So we had that unique flexibility which we usually don’t.
That would never happen for our usual projects. Usually we have a single print and need to calculate within smaller margins so we would not have too much leftovers after the print is done.
The most appropriate approach in Pula was to get there and talk to locals, to find out what would be best for the city as we realised that there is a really loud and strong local voice in the community. There was some hassling with the government to get things going, but once we were rolling, we were really rolling. After lenghty discussions between the municipality organs and local culture activists, with us as a mediator, we found the perfect first design for the wall on Tomislav Square .The final result was a painting by Picasso called “The Rape of the Sabine Women”. In a sense a perfect fit for our first mural in Pula, since the original was admittedly made for the city of Pula as a gift by Pablo Picasso. We printed it during warm nights and under a blistering sun during the days, it took some serious effort, but the final piece was amazing.
There are some limitations on our robot. We have made them up as a precautionary measure based on the approximate of our knowledge of the technology and our experience gathered every step of the way. We keep breaking these rules with good results. One of them is temperature. The robot works best between 10–30 degrees Celsius. We broke the upper limit of that in Pula (, and a few months later we tested the possibility to go below the bottom limit as well, but about that in another text). After each project, the robot usually gets a few upgrades and developments. In this case, for example, one of the upgrades was a better airflow for the cooling system.
When we started printing the Picasso, it was really the height of a heat wave. At first it seemed to really be a challenge, but this is where the prototyping comes into play. We are always equipped and ready to modify our workflow and technology to push the limits of what we can do. In this case, at first we pushed the working hours and ended up printing the mural mostly at night, but as we also had made small modifications in the darkness, we were actually able to print well into the midday of blistering sun after a warm night and finished the mural when it was around 37 degrees outside. We had, in a sense, pushed our upper printing capability to around 35–40 degrees (not officially yet, but theoretically), which was actually the weather there at this point. Hot and dry. It was not in any way easy, but the possibility is there and future iterations of Albert will encompass that.
The next two murals in Pula were in a courtyard of a magnificent art center called ROJC. The center is built in place of a used-to-be military complex. When researching for the walls we could print on, we met the manager and founder of this community, Marko. He was so facinated with our work and technology that he invited us to do those murals there. First of them was “The Mother of Matter”, a piece by a local artist and also one of the founders of ROJC.
We are, essentially, a printing service. And at the same time so much more than that. This is where I am talking about our service and approach being a prototype. We like people, and it seems people like us as well. So most of our projects end up being so much more than just a labour service. They are big events. With the robot being the rockstar of that event. We have discovered our attractivity in that sense. People do want to come and see whats happening, and it is interesting. So most of our projects become a social live marketing devices, with us just being there.
This happened in ROJC for both of these murals. People were there to cheer us along and talk about the robot. We love talking about our robot, and how it works. So these kind of event based projects are really enjoyable. Due to the connection with Mindvalley and their people, these events blew into these really international points of contact.
The second mural in the courtyard of ROJC came to us as a submission from an open call for artists to get involved, organised by our sister enterprize Robots for Humanity. This was also a prototype we developed and utilised in Croatia. The prototype of organising and running a campaign for the artwork of the mural. Most of our company manifesto is about the promotion of art and artists. So we are constantly thinking of ways to get artists directly in our process.
Robots for Humanity launched a really successful open call for some of the artwork we were doing in Pula. It had a big reception and feedback. There were thousands of works submitted through this platform. After a couple of initial and fast selections based on social media response and artistic criteria, some of them were dropped and the best ones entered a public vote.
We have some experience in running such campaigns, but in Pula, it was really immensely bigger of any of the previous open calls we have organised. Through the promotion with Mindvalley and our own work, it quickly became a worldwide thing, and we got thousands of submissions from everywhere. Two of the murals we did in Pula found their artwork through this campaign. The first one was an elephant we did in the ROJC center and another one was a big whale with an environmental message.
The last mural in Pula was the one we will probably be remembered by. It is on a 30m high building on top of a hill. At this point, we were adjusted to the local conditions and however this being the highest wall in Pula that we did, it came together smoothly and we were able to print it with heat during the day with little to no complications, so it took us 2 weeks and 3 murals to get the prototype and our experience to a next level. The whale was another piece submitted through the art call.
What happens when people see us working?
Bonus mural in Croatia was done in the town over, Medulin. The local government in Medulin had gotten a whiff of what we had been doing in Pula and also wanted a mural. So we had a really nice day in Medulin as well. We printed a small mural and they even organised an event for us called “Medulin gets a mural”. The most important acquintance we made in Croatia, was at that party. A fisherman called Xixi, who ended up, with a very roundabout way, being the key for us to get a rental car the next day when there was none available. So we would be able to go to the airport in yet another town and fly back home.
PS! Stay tuned for bloopers and behind the scenes look at Pula, with some good anecdotal mishaps and coincidences. One of which involves Xixi and a girl at a Sixt car rental counter.
