PAinting Music

17th Jul 2025

In this article we hear from Kate Steenhauer from PAinting Music, an organisation that blends art and technology by using Explainable AI to create music from live painting.  

Who is PAinting Music and what do you do?  

PAinting Music Limited is a company comprised of Artist & Filmmaker Kate Steenhauer and Artificial Intelligence (AI) engineers Dr Starkey and Jack Caven. 

It is a science communication endeavour that uses Explainable AI to create music from live painting, with products that spark art-science-themed inspired conversation centred around the computer pioneer Ada Lovelace. 

PAinting Music offers a diverse production package of audience interactive apps, live performance, audio-visual installations, films, art/STEM workshops, documentaries & live talks, and artwork.  

Tell us something unique or interesting about PAinting Music 

PAinting Music uses algorithms that are explainable, which is innovative even in the field of AI, and the combination of AI, painting and music represents (to the best of our knowledge) a world first.  

PAinting Music uses Explainable & Green AI techniques based on low computational costs that have the capacity to be truly creative.  

Most AI are ‘black box’ models that cannot explain what they are doing; these tools are  
probabilistic and not meaningful creative. This is an ongoing and real issue, with countries across the globe increasingly introducing legislation to control the use of unexplainable AI models and to mitigate their perceived harm on ordinary citizens. 

PAinting Music raises questions and stimulates conversation around AI ethics, the datasets used for training AI models, the techniques (black box or explainable) that are applied within the AI, and the application of AI itself in our world and the subsequent impact that AI has on our society. 

PAinting Music rises above the general offering of ‘just live painting’, as it taps into the forefront of a vibrant art movement showing live painting as part of an interactive story. 

What is your biggest achievement as an organisation?  

We launched multiple products within a space of 3 months: 

PAinting Music Canvas Capture: Live performance using Explainable AI to create music from live painting in real time and unique for each performance, centred around the question is AI good or bad?  

PAinting Music Sketch Pad: An audience-interactive App that allows audiences to create their own interactive ‘performance’ by creating music from their drawings through the PAinting Music software.  

The Landscape of Intelligence:  a multi-media exhibit based on a limited-edition handmade artist book with sound and video, that pays tribute to computer pioneer Ada Lovelace.   

Nearly 200 hundred years ago, and a century before the invention of the computer, Ada Lovelace explicitly describes a machine that could compose music. The Landscape of Intelligence is a beautiful audio-visual experience, where actors animate Ada, her mother Annabella Byron, tutor and family acquaintances along with unique moving image techniques and music. 

PAinting Music Website and YouTube channel tells the story so far. 

What are your main challenges?  

There are no other products in the market that mine artistic characteristics from visual objects and use the data to drive the production of music that is intuitive and compositionally sound. We believe PAinting Music is the first to create a product like this.  

Herein we want to further develop the music, using an explainable process for the AI to learn and actually understand music. So that is what we are aiming for with PAinting Music – we are not there yet, but that is the path we are on. 

PAinting Music is ready to engage with audiences and platforms with the products we have. Around our products we deliver talks and workshops (such as in schools and creative learning spaces) and invite interactive conversation. One of the challenges is now our products are launched is to get PAinting Music in front of new audiences. So, get in touch to engage, connect, invest and share PAinting Music. 

What are your next steps as an organisation?  

PAinting Music is a live project – this is not the end result - what you are seeing is our first attempt.  

PAinting Music is at the heart of current AI research working in Robotics at Aberdeen University. This research looks at how can we have an AI that is explainable and understands the consequences of its actions and then to use that knowledge in new situations/ scenarios in a way that is safe.  

So, the Fundamental research and PAinting Music are both trying to address the same thing: Can we have an AI that achieves results in a way that is explainable because if AI can explain, then that means ethical.  

Many largescale models used in industry are known as ‘black box’, in other words, we are unable to see why the AI model made its decision. The impact of using these tools, particularly when they are unregulated and when they cannot explain how it reaches its decision – true of almost all AI - is scary and that is the world we are heading into. 

PAinting Music is addressing all the issues that are of interest of AI today, so it is very current. 

Anyone who would like to volunteer to support or get involved with PAinting Music, please get in touch with Kate at katesteenhauer@hotmail.com.