Meet Nonoti, the robotic portrait drawing machine from Petaluma - The Petaluma Argus-Courier

An inked stylus moves across a blank stretch of white paper.

Perched on a stool, urged to remain as still as possible, the subject, Kai Hope, poses quetly, staring straight ahead at the artist, who is currently focused on producing as lifelike a sketch of him as possible.

“This is kind of weird,” whispers Hope. “I don’t usually like being drawn, but I’ve never been sketched by something like this, so ...”

This particular artist, named Nonoti, after a South African river, is indeed like no other Hope, or any of the other subjects now waiting in line for their turn, has ever been sketched by. That is because Nonoti – designed, engineered and carefully programmed by Petaluma’s Stephan Milborrow – is a contraption, a tool, an instrument.

In other words, this artist is a machine, part Etch-a-Sketch, part camera and part robot.

“When I designed Nonoti,” admitted Milborrow, taking a break on a busy Friday afternoon at downtown Petaluma’s Usher Art Gallery, “I had an overriding vision that Nonoti would be like a person, that it would turn its head to look at you, then look back at the paper it was sketching on, then look back at you again. I wanted people to feel studied. I wanted them to be seen.”

Milborrow was certainly successful in this.

Whenever Nonoti’s “face” – basically a tiny, square camera lens mounted on a thick wooden stick wrapped in multicolored wires – swivels from looking at its artfully specific illustration to look at its living and breathing subject, it is difficult to think of it as a mere computer. The fact that Nonoti’s eyes – or should we say “eye” – pivots back and forth, even tilting its head a bit as it studies the seated model, does give one the impression of being deeply and carefully observed.

“Nonoti doesn’t have a soul, of course,” said Milborrow. “Believe me. It’s not alive. It’s not human. But Nonoti does see you.”

The event at Usher gallery was part of a brief tour of local art galleries that Milborrow and Nonoti were engaged in during the month of August. Previously, the machine proved to be a big hit at July’s Rivertown Revival After Dark, where a long line of humans waited to be sketched by Nonoti, their artfully lifelike portraits then posted on a bulletin board for all to see.

Nonoti’s drawing style in both detailed and minimalist, building a drawing of a subject’s face with intricate scratches and scribbles that don’t look like anything much until all-of-a-sudden they do. Asked if that is how Milborrow himself draws pictures – since he’s the one who programmed Nonoti to do what it does the way that it does it – he replies with a shrug.

“Kind of,” Milborrow smiles. “Originally, yes. But over time, its own style has started to emerge. I’ve done a lot of figure drawing, so I’ve certainly tried to put a lot of that experience into it, and I want to emphasize that Nonoti, for me, is an art project even more than it’s an engineering project.”

Milborrow began demonstrating Nonoti’s abilities about two years ago, often with the help of his assistant Ralph Carmines. He does not have a website, but does have an Instagram account (@nonoti.machine), where people can find out more about the portrait-drawing apparatus.

As entertaining as it is to watch Nonoti at work, the presence of a machine that does what sketch artists train for years to do is occasionally met with a degree of alarm by some people. With concerns about AI replacing writers, filmmakers and artists in an array of professional fields, is Nonoti simply conditioning us to be comfortable with the idea of creative jobs being given over to machines and computer programs.

“It’s a legitimate question,” says Milborrow, pinning up Nonoti’s most drawing of Hope and placing a new piece of blank paper under the stylus, preparing for the next subject to take a seat. “People ask if Nonoti is AI, and my answer is ‘Not really.’ Nonoti is a different lineage. I see this as a tool, like a brush or a pen. In no way, shape or form am I trying to replace artists with machines. Artists have been around for thousands of years and they always will be.”

For what it’s worth, he points out, Nonoti – unlike some AI art programs – does not connect to the web and browse or borrow other images. And its memory is erased after every public appearance, so it is not adding what it sees to any nefarious facial recognition program.

“The real magic of Nonoti is what happens in the heads of the people being drawn, not in whatever is going on inside the machine,” Milborrow says. “As human beings, we bring all of our own ideas of what it means to be looked at by another person. Some people like being seen, others don’t, and we carry those feelings with us when he sit down to be sketched by Nonoti, and we give those feelings to it, and imagine all kinds of things. But Nonoti is only a machine. It has no feelings of its own about the people it draws. It simply draws them.”

And draws them well.

Back on his feet again, studying the portrait Nonoti has just created of him, Hope is clearly impressed.

“This may be the most accurate picture ever done of me,” he says. “And that includes photographs. I don’t know what it is, but somehow, Nonoti really got me. It’s shockingly lifelike.”

Nearby, Milborrow simply nods, smiling again.

“It rather satisfying, to see people respond like that, and to do these public events,” he says. “I could be home alone in my studio, but instead I get to be here watching people be watched and drawn by a machine. The people, and how they react, is as much a part of the art of Nonoti as the drawings themselves. It’s like performance art. As an artist, it’s quite a satisfying thing to be a part of.”

Nonoti will be drawing pictures at Slough City Studios (409 Petaluma Blvd. Suite C) on Saturday, Sept. 14, from 1-5 p.m. To learn more about Milborrow and Nonoti, visit instagram.com/nonoti.machine or send him a message at [email protected].