Intro to Visual Practice / Fall 2010

I took 16 photos from one day in my summer and asked participants to choose three of them and arrange them to make some kind of story, caption, or commentary.  I was interested in seeing what kind of creations participants produced when drawing from such limited resources and having upper restrictions on what they could create (3 pictures maximum, 3 sentences maximum).  I was also interested in what stories people created, since all 16 of these pictures came from one day, and in their selves constitute an original story.

Cy Twombly’s created his ‘Four Seasons’ (1993-94) using paints, pencil and crayon. Mixing paint with pencil is typical of his work. The canvases display paints violently dashed onto the canvas, as well as others which have been placed and allowed to drip down the canvas. Each canvas also has writing scribbled on it, and they all say somewhere “Ah, it goes, is lost.” The work is of course about the passage of time, but it also has a mood of loss, decline, and consciousness of what is lost with time.

This is an example of a product of my drawing machine. There are many differences between Twombly’s piece and mine, but I also saw some interesting comparisons. My piece does not involve an exploration of color or the combination of words and image like his does, however both of our pieces are somehow about abstractness, randomness, and the effects of time. Twombly uses abstraction of shapes and colors to achieve a mood for each of his four seasons. To me, his abstractions create a feeling. My abstractions were not intended to have any specific kind of effect, because the nature of my machine creates a randomized product, something untouched by the human hand in a way. Just as his different seasons are in some way connected to nature, I think the coffee and tea stains I use are evocative of something natural, something of the earth. Twombly’s piece uses randomness in the way he allowed paint to move around on his canvas, without any specific control or intention. He mixes randomness with intentionality in his more violent strokes and writing. My machine inherently creates a random product, because of the nature of removing human choice and touch from the equation (I poured tea and coffee through a series of different funnels). The effects of time are expressed in his piece both by its theme as “Four Seasons” – time passing, things coming and going, etc. But they are also expressed by the changes in the actual work over time – the movement and drying of paint. The passage of time is also captured in my piece, as that is what creates the different hues on the sheet. The darker areas are where the liquid pooled and stayed static as it dried, and the lighter areas are those that had tea/coffee on them but then the liquid moved, leaving only a trace of where it had been.

An obvious influence for my drawing machine, which produced the following image:

was Jackson Pollock and his drip technique. As depicted below in Pollock’s Number One (an interesting fact: Pollock’s Number Five…very similar to Number One in aesthetics…is the most expensive painting of all time, last sold for 140 million dollars)

Indeed both Jackson and my machine work by manipulating the process of ‘dripping’ paint. However there are many differences in the outcome, as evidenced by comparing the above images, this is mainly due to process and materials.

Jackson worked on large canvases spread out on his studio floor, moving around the canvas he dripped house paint, a much denser material than the ink I used, across the canvas, layering until covered and aesthetically pleasing and interesting.

Contrastingly my machine which worked on its own, with no human interference other than me loading the straws with ink and flicking the on switch, was unable to judge whether the placing of the ink created a ‘beautiful’ or ‘interesting’ image. I digress here to note that i did originally plan to use acrylic paint mixed with a stretching medium, which is closer in consistency withPollock’s house paint. Unfortunately the paint got stuck in the straws and if it did come out after a long period of time it fell as one glob onto the paper. The ink, on the other hand, created a splatter effect that I found to be much more interesting.

Joshua Davis
Digital Artist/Designer/Technologist
Uses technology and computers as a medium to create projects.
Employs random vector shapes to create digital artworks that are abstract and highly visual.

http://www.joshuadavis.com/

Mr. Davis’ work is similar to the work I did for this first IVP because we both used computers and technology available to us to create a seemingly random piece of art work.  While he uses random shapes to generate his art, used random photos.  We also differ in our specific randomizing technologies. I used Google Images where as he uses vector shapes from Adobe Photoshop.

Wassily Kandinsky was one of the most original and influential artists of the twentieth-century, and when designing my machine, I took inspiration from his vivid, unconstrained style. His “inner necessity” to express his emotional perceptions (early Existentialism) led to the development of an abstract style of painting that was based on the non-representational properties of color and form–similar to my machines production of points, lines, and shapes devoid of figurative or external referent.

Kandinsky’s compositions were the culmination of his efforts to create a “pure painting” that would provide the same emotional power as a musical composition. Below is Composition VI, painted in 1913, depicting apocalypse by water.

The hope of my machine and my works is to produce a similarly intriguing abstract composition that achieves meaning  (whether that be by inspiring curiosity, introspection, humor or any emotive response) by embracing color, shapes, and the more liberal drip technique.

Composition VIII (below) reflects the influence of Suprematism and Constructivism in Kandinsky’s work: contrasting forms provide the dynamic balance; the large circle in the upper left plays against the network of precise lines in the right portion of the canvas. I (in the same vein) aim to utilize a contrast/layering/repetition-based method to increase aesthetic and intellectual possibilities with my program. Kandinsky uses different colors within the forms to energize their geometry: a yellow circle with blue halo versus blue circle with yellow halo; a right angle filled with blue and an acute angle colored pink. The background also works to enhance the dynamism of the composition, appearing neither flat nor clearly three-dimensional. These elements of complimentary color relationships, shape dynamics, and composition also comprise the basis of my machine. Though my work does not achieve the complexity of Kandinsky, I pilfered a number of techniques I intend to incorporate into future works.

While my independent project is probably incomparable to the level of mastery of Pollock’s work – I see some similarities between my own and his dripping technique artwork: we are both manipulating the way paints hit the surface, and creating images based on various angles and densities the paints and the surface come in contact.  I read that Pollock’s work defied traditional painting convention by exceeding the ‘upright’ norm, and allowing viewers to look at the painting from various angles – I think that my dripping art is also similar in that sense.

The difference however, is that the result of my artwork is more chance-driven – meaning that there is a very high level of randomness in what kind of picture is produced.  Pollock’s work seems to be more of a result of his technique, where he has control of how to drip, pour or splash paints over canvas.  His paintings overall are also more dense, compared to mine, where a lot of space is left from paints.

Pollock

My work

Muti Randolph is a mix between an artist, designer and architect. He uses all disciplines to create artwork and designs for anything from pieces of artwork to nightclubs and fashion show sets. Muti Randolph uses computer programs to create elaborate sets made out of light. He also uses light in a way that enhances any design.

Though my drawing machine didn’t use light in anyway, when I saw the work he did for a department store, it automatically reminded me of my own work. I connect the work of Muti Randolph to my own machine, with the way that the word draw or artwork was used. Light is not necessary thought of as a drawing, but when put at a certain speed to display it becomes its own drawing. It is like how though my spinning top didn’t draw, but when it was spun it became its own drawing. The machine is not only a machine, but a piece of artwork in itself like my spinning top.

The department shoe store set image is the one that made me think of my own drawing machine. When i look at it I could see this shoe store set spinning to create a blurred image of light, and the pastel yellow color. The work is in 3 separate pieces put together to create a image. My spinning top was also 3 pieces folded together to create a design.

Amanda Jordan

http://laartmachine.com/mearone.php

http://www.baurmanngallery.com/

http://www.mearone.com/gallery/

Mear One & Drawing Machine

Mear One is an LA based artist whose thirty-three piece series “Sketches of Babylon” encompasses aspects that I consider to be machine like just as last week’s production of my own ‘drawing machine.’  Mear is extrapolating from the larger idea of the urban landscape in the same manner a machine has a common goal of production and assembles its parts to attain the goal or creation of the product.  Mear’s series brings together various visual aspects to transmit a “future-past of urban decay from decadence and power as well as a future-future that is both ominous and beautiful,” as the L.A. ArtMachine comments on the installation of the works.  The artist, Mear One, becomes the ‘drawing machine’ in the most literal sense as the sole creator and producer of the works; however, the visual works he produces are machine-like in and of themselves.  They assemble and organize in order to achieve a goal – the transmission of Mear One’s thoughts.

In terms of Mear One’s “Sketches of Babylon” and my own ‘drawing machine’ productions, there is common ground in terms of subject matter being machine-like.  Mear One depicts urban landscapes, often including representations of robotic human figures, cars, cameras, and the ever present, greatly detailed skyscraper edifices – all aspects that assemble to generate the mechanism of everyday city life.  The urban skyline appears distorted while employing the use of warm yellow and orange tones.  With this, my own productions also employ the use of specific tones; furthermore, they represent letters and words – both integral parts of written language which itself is a highly mechanical entity.  On a few of the pieces in “Sketches of Babylon” Mear One chooses to frame the works with text as well, creating a more literal similarity between my productions and those of Mear One since both employ the use of text.

As concluded after completing my own productions, Mear One’s “Sketches of Babylon” can also be seen as representations of machine like structures-literally and figuratively-in addition to being produced mechanically as well.

For my project, I played a lot with the idea of a machine as automatic, as something opposite the typical process of creating drawings manually. I decided to make this project about the tension between two distinctive mark-making processes, rather than to harmonize them. The paper became the threshold and the meeting place of the images that I make, and the impressions a machine is capable of producing.

I made figure drawings on pages from my sketchbook, then went to each of three outlets in my room and re-plugged in the appliances in their exact configurations through the paper. I wanted to use the action of plugging in a machine because it is a precondition to the machine functioning. It is a universal action that is so commonplace and yet in itself leaves no mark.

Saburo Murakami was an artist I remembered as I was making my project. He was part of a performative/action art group in Japan in the 1950s, called the Gutai. “Passing Through” is an example of what he calls his “painting.” He created a series of large paper screens, stretched like canvas across frames. He then in one fast motion ran through all of the panels. His action of running, which we typically don’t associate with mark-making, left visible impressions. Though he didn’t exactly make a machine, he utilized an automatic motion to create marks on a surface. The paper became a record of an action.

“Passing Through” and my drawing machine have some similar qualities. We both conceptualized mark-making to include the breaking of a surface. We both used an action that typically does not leave marks as the basis of our machines. We both also used an action of repetition or iteration–he running through consecutive panels, I plugged in multiple appliances. We also both alluded to existing practices of painting and drawing–he by mounting the paper like canvas, I by making figure drawings on my pages.

Serena Qiu

Sol Lewitt conceives his artwork by having others follow his instructions. For his Wall Drawing #65 in particular, Lewitt provides these guidelines:

“LINES NOT SHORT, NOT STRAIGHT, CROSSING AND TOUCHING, DRAWN AT RANDOM USING FOUR C OLORS, UNIFORMLY DISPERSED WITH MAXIMUM DENSITY, COVERING THE ENTIRE SURFACE OF THE WALL”

The interesting aspect about Lewitt’s guidelines is how they depend on randomness and chance in their execution. And I tried to incorporate this aspect with my machine as well. Just as Lewitt allowed for the change of medium for his Wall Drawing 541 from an ink wash to an acrylic wash, my machine allowed for a change in colors. But the overall concept/idea/guidelines remains intact.

Sunhay You

For some reason, I came across this artist’s site and his modern, mechanistic way of making art really reminded me of what we have been talking about in class; in particular, this project on the EggBot that he is working on resembled some features and aspects of my own drawing machine. I used the power of a fan to generate the movement of the brush to create the circular strokes necessary to smother the paint on the sheet of paper in a circular manner. His Eggbot employs the use of a very precise computer/machine-based algorithm to also paint the eggs; the resemblance is that these eggs (or different circular objects, such as lightbulbs even) are being painted by an “outside hand”, just like my swirls were created by an “outside source/hand”-the movement of the paintbrush propelled by the fan’s motion/energy. Noth of these methods employ the use of “kinetic motion”. 

Here is a link to a video/picture of his productions.

http://www.taomc.com/educational_uses/teaching_machines/eggbot.html

 Here is a picture of the Eggbot machine drawing on a lightbulb.The designs created are very intricate and detailed and can be repeated by the same process of the machine.

For my drawing machine, I created a twofold formula. The first part of the formula entails a set of the following instructions:
1) Pick any song.
2) Mix 2 colors according to the title of that song. (Let the title inspire your selections.)
3) Play the soung aloud.
4) Dip each wooden end of your paintbrush into a separate color.

5) Drum to any rhythm within the song that you so choose.

The second part of the formula is the drumming rhythm, inevitably determined by the participant’s song choice. My machine produces bi-colored compositions that evoke musical overtones much like the works of conceptual artist  Tom Marioni who creates rhythmic compositions in his Action Drawings. By performing the same repetitive actions with a pen or paintbrush in hand, he creates drawings using a pre-constructed formula without human interference. In one of his compositions, he even uses brush drumsticks to create a rhythmic drawing, and in another work he incorporates music as well as other participants.  (See video http://www.tommarioni.com/wp-content/video/tommarionivideo-web.mov). By using a twofold formula–instructions and musical rhythm– Marioni takes the human element out of the drawing action, creating a drawing machine.

Reading through the text surrounding Marius Watz’s Drawing Machine for the public Norwegian site Odin, I realized how we interpreted the concept of drawing machine differently. Marius explains, “The task of the artist is to “construct” the machine so that it creates aesthetically satisfying images, but once the machine is set in motion the artist is reduced to spectator.” When brainstorming my machine, I did not interpret the definition of machine  as restricted to the concept that the machine itself  had to physically create the image.

Both Marius and I concur that a machine is constructed based on a set of rules, and that the artist is always going to have control over the machine based on either the inputs or the outputs. In Marius’s model, he, the artist, has created machines that rely on the artist’s knowledge of computer programming and responds to the patterns the artist chooses to input. In my model, the machine relys on the artist’s ability to draw in pencil, the machine decides the input the artist generates the output.

Although, both machines do incorporate the randomness and manufactured principles that come from a set of rules. Marius’s machines do follow the programming yet focus only on the ‘local’ area of the image not the ‘global’ and move randomly creating a different image each time used. While my machine relys on the random number generation of dice and the low probability of repeating the same sequence through the rule process.

Looking at both of our ‘machines’, there is one aspect that they both lack. I wish that the machines we created could be reused and reconstructed by anyone. A machine that could be used by any person no matter the skill set they would bring to the project would allow art to be disseminated – and further Watz’s goal to infuse art into the public space.

The work of Asa Roos falls under the category of procedural generation.  She creates complex codes for the computer to read, interpret, and then decode and render as images in the form of video games for the consumer.  Her knowledge of codes and the way to manipulate the text to depict a realistic image in a virtual world is the beauty of her artistic skill.

My drawing machine is similar in that we both use a method that is independent of our own body’s doing to create a visual that we want to display as our art.  Her machine is the computer and she then uses codes to tell the machine what to draw.  She invents the way to manipulate the machine and have it render what image she desires.  My machine uses a set of rules to tell a player what to draw.  Both Roos and I are dictating what can be drawn, but the rest is up to the machine.

Our machines are different in that Asa Roos is more active in her manipulation than me.  I cannot control when a player draws a card and during which composition, but Roos can insert code into her piece that will hopefully produce a result she desires.  Also, her machine is electrical and much more complex than my game consisting of notecards and chalk.

However, the concepts are the same at a basic level.  My drawing machine is a precursor to more advance models such as that of Roos’s.

Yoko Ono is a Japanese-American musician, artist, author and peace activist. Her artwork, often tied to the groundbreaking Fluxus movement, is highly performative and interactive. Many of her interactive works involve a set of rules given to participants that lead to Ono’s final artistic goal for the piece.  The way in which her pieces function as Drawing Machines is clearly evident in the 1996 work entitled “Wish Tree.” For this project, which was redone as part of the MoMA’s 2010 summer sculpture garden installation, Ono prepared a set of rules or a protocol that participants must follow to help “complete” her work. The text was presented on a sign next to a potted tree and said the following:

“Wish Piece by Yoko Ono (1996)

Make a wish
Write it down on a piece of paper
Fold it and tie it around a branch of a Wish Tree
Ask your friends to do the same
Keep wishing
Until the branches are covered with wishes”

For such a work there is a clear process that participants must follow and the result is completely homogenized, except for the text of the wish and its placement on the tree.

Like Yoko Ono, I created a drawing machine that incorporated a rigid protocol that relied on outside participants to generate a product.  In the case of the Wish Tree, the wish statement and the placement of the wish on a branch was determined by the participant, while in my work the participant selected the books to use to complete my rule set and were given liberty in terms of form of presentation.  Nevertheless, both works combine a regimented mechanical and variable component. Ono also sets up her work as an ongoing project that is not completed until ever bit of space on the tree branches is covered. My project, instead, generates one unique product every time the rule set is followed, and while the process can certainly be repeated, it is not necessitated.  It is interesting to note that while text plays a central role in both our projects, Ono’s text is her variable component and my text is the highly mechanized component.

The following images are from the 2010 installation of Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree at the MoMA.

An artist with similar methods to my machine is the American artist, Roman Verostko.  Verostko is best known for his work with algorithms in art (http://www.verostko.com/algorithm.html).  He creates works of art by producing machines that follow algorithms, or any process with clear, distinct instructions.  Perhaps one of his more relevant projects is his use of a “pen plotter” that followed software code to produce drawings.

This project differs from my drawing machine in more of a material fashion than in concept.  Both projects involve the use of algorithms, each producing a drawing by transforming random inputs into art.  Whereas his pen plotter followed a code written in computer software, my machine allowed chance to place the balls on the paper and then a set of rules is followed to produce the drawing.  In addition, in Verostko’s machine, the software code is what applies the algorithmic functions to produce the “chance effect,” while in my drawing machine, the algorithm is applied after the chance variable has already occurred.

For more information on his work, or to view some of his works, his homepage is http://www.verostko.com, and the link to his works is here.

My drawing machine uses the same type of idea to create artwork. While my machine is not as complicated or as intricate as Griffiths’ machine, both machines produce similar types of circles. Both machines also use the same types of mediums to create the artwork. They each used sharpies to draw on a white surface.

In both machines, none of the circles are perfect. In Griffiths’ machine, there is a more apparent semblance of circles as the machine was designed to be able to reproduce that shape more easily. My machine, while it does create a similar circular shape when used, changes diameter near the end of every spin, which makes it very difficult to create similar reproductions. I am sure Griffiths experimented many times to get the product he did. While I was able to make my machine better over multiple tries at creating a circle, I am sure that I would have to use a different mechanism to be able to reproduce similar shapes.

Joseph L Griffiths’ Drawing Machine

Dominik J. Davalos’ Drawing Machine

Alexander Calder’s mobile sculptures could be considered a machine because they follow a specific rule and process. They are three dimensional works of art created with sheet metal, wire, and paint, and sometimes also wood, rod, and other materials. The colors Calder uses are bright and stark, and he uses simple shapes. There is a delicate balance to his work, both physically and artistically, bringing a solidarity to his body of work that makes it clear that it was “processed” through a certain machine. His thought process could be considered as the machine, as they are all unique pieces of work resulting from one general thought process.

My machine used colored bubble solution was the medium, and while the medium is entirely different, the works resulting from my machine also arose from a certain process. In my case, it was the process of standing at a certain spot and blowing bubbles; however, whereas Calder’s machine could be seen as a set of guidelines, whether thought of consciously or subconsciously, that overlies his mobiles, my machine was more of an actual mechanism that generated artwork. There is a certain element of randomness in the very nature of my process that removes the human element, while Calder’s machine is very much produced with a strong human element. Nevertheless, it is fascinating to look at an artist’s work from the perspective of machines.

Images from Google Images; more information on and works of Alexander Calder can be found at the Calder Foundation website.

Sol Lewitt does a variety of pieces, but the majority of his work tends to focus on line.  These pieces can include a sense of randomness, as in these:

http://teachingline.wordpress.com/2009/09/27/sol-lewitt-wall-drawing-273-lines-to-points-on-a-grid-1975/sol-lewitt-wall-drawing-273-lines-to-points-on-a-grid-1975/

http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=91405

His random lines are similar to mine, with a few differences.  He has lines branching from eight different points along the edges of the piece; I used one starting point somewhere in the center for each piece.  With the rolling of dice, my machine produces completely random drawings similar to the lines Sol Lewitt uses.  He also does many etchings, and that process is similar to ours of the drawing machine.  Starting with the plates, each print is a slightly different replication of that original piece.

Jean Tinguely is a Swiss sculptor and painter.  He is known for his work in creating machines that can draw and “play”.  He is famous for his “kinetic art” sculptures that relate to dadaism.  His machines actually draw which is what our project intended to do.  He was featured at the forefront of a exhibition in Switzerland at the Museum Tinguely called “Art Machines Machine Art” among other artists that created machines that can draw for themselves.

Here are some of his machines in action:

cyclograveur

machine a dessiner

My machine was more suspended and less complicated, obviously than his with which he used materials such as iron or brass and moving parts.  My machine was more about the artists manipulation of his own art but I suppose that Jean Tinguely’s work is more closely related to the project because he creates machines that draw completely on their own.

Another artist that I really like creates work that could be considered a machine with her own light installations.  I consider these to be machines, creating art but its a farther stretch than Jean Tinguely’s work. 

Tracey Emin is one of my favorite modern artists.  Tracey works in all types of media from painting to neon and installations.  Her work deals with her experiences and is often sexual and forward, explicit and seductive.

http://www.whitecube.com/artists/emin/

I am defining a machine as a designated, formulaic process. By following the steps listed below, a unique piece of artwork will be created.

Steps

1. Mix in a color of your choice with bubble solution. I mixed in color using acrylic paint simply because that’s what I had at hand, but perhaps food coloring would be a simpler method.
2. Place sheets of paper on the ground and stand one foot away.
3. Then, by blowing bubbles over a sheet of paper, the splatters from the bubble popping combined with bubbles that land on the paper will result in a colorful drawing. Note that the tricky part is that you have little control over where the bubbles will land.
4. Repeat with a second color.

Revised Steps (for future reference)

1. Mix in a color of your choice with bubble solution using food coloring.
2. Tape a large piece of paper on a wall.
3. Standing four feet away, use a large bubble wand to blow bubbles.
4. Repeat with a second color.

Ideally, the bubbles land on the paper and the fluid swirls within are visible through the coloring added to the bubble solution.

Optional Color Combination Rules

Roll a die:

1. Blue and orange
2. Purple and green
3. Red and black
4. Yellow and purple
5. Green and red
6. Grey and pink

(low quality phone pictures, sorry)

My drawing machine uses dice, ruler, and protractor to randomly draw series of line segments.

Rules:

1.       Pick a starting point on the paper.

2.       Roll a die, this is the number of times you will repeat the following directions.

3.       Roll two dice.  Their total represents the number on a clockface in which direction you will draw.  In other words, each number accounts for 30 degrees; so two 6’s would be a total of 12, or 360 degrees, and your direction would be exactly upward.

4.       Roll the third dice.  This number represents the number of quarter inches you will draw the line.  A value of 5 would be 1¼ inches, drawn in the direction determined in step 3.

5.       Repeat the process from where you just ended, re-determining direction and length for each line segment drawn, until you eventually draw off the edge of the paper.

6.       Return to starting point and repeat until you have the number of separate lines you originally rolled, each starting at the original point and continuing until off paper.

Interesting to note is that all these lines end up “travelling” in a southwest direction, that because I used two dice to roll for direction, no roll could equal 1 – so no line segments are in the 30 degrees NW direction.  Additionally, the most common roll total for two dice is a seven, while rolls of 11, 12, 2, 3 must result from fewer combinations, so the majority of line segments are down and to the left(180 to 270 degrees from N).

Initially, I found it quite difficult to relate Jean Tinguely’s drawing machine to the one I created for our class assignment. I used acrylic paint and a water bottle with a hole in the bottom for my drawing machine; Tinguely’s is infinitely more complex and acts as a fountain that sprays water all over the body of water it is enclosed in. After thinking about it, though, there are a few similarities between my drawing machine and Tinguely’s.

As the most basic comparison, Tinguely and I both used water as a tool to create our machines. I used water to drip down into my water bottle and mix with the paint — and the paint made the drawing. Tinguely actually used the spraying water and water droplets as the “drawing” or piece of art. For me, water was the middleman, while for Tinguely, it was the end product.

Tinguely’s drawing machine is more of a machine than mine because it has no human interaction whatsoever. The fountain (or whatever you want to call it) works purely on its own due to the self-sufficient mechanisms Tinguely built. My water bottle machine, on the other hand, involves some human interaction.

As a whole, I don’t really think my machine is that similar to Tinguely’s except for our joint usage of one major component: water. I never knew such a basic thing could shape a piece of art so significantly before researching Tinguely’s work and constructing my own drawing machine.

In approaching this project I decided to take the prompt very literally; attempting to create a machine that with little human interaction (other than flipping the switch on) would create a drawing.

My machine is comprised of a blow dryer duct-taped to an oscillating fan at a forty-five degree angle to the floor; with ink-filled straws inserted into the nozzle of the blow dryer. It works when the blow dryer is set to high on the cool setting and the oscillating fan is set to a low speed.  As the fan rotates the blow dryer shoots the ink across pieces of paper spread on the floor.

As my ‘on’ switch I used a surge protector…plugging both the fan and the blow dryer switched to the on setting into the surge protector which was off. Once the straws were loaded into the blow-dryer I then switched the plugged-in surge protector on.  In retrospect I realize that this could have been potentially dangerous, but it all seemed to work out okay. Below are some picture I took of my machine prior to turning it on, as well as the three products (drawings) it produced.

Although I had no idea at the time, my work heavily resembles that of Vermont artist Jean Cherouny. Cherouny used to focus on landscapes, but now she recently exhibited 21 works at Middlebury College in an show titled “Painted.” In the exhibition were works painted with her rollerblading technique, which, like mine, involves strapping on the rollerblades (the machines) and gliding over the canvas.

Even though Cherouny and I essentially used the same technique, our styles vary quite differently. For example, I had a set time for how long I would “work” on each piece (two minutes), and I made sure to not look down so I was not conscious of my work. Indeed, I wanted each of my products to have as little human influence as possible–I let the rollerblades do the work. Cherouny, however, asserts that each stroke in her rollerblade works is deliberate, so when she is painting she is completely cognizant of what she is doing. When I painted I had no idea what the work looked like until the end of the two minutes, but Cherouny alters her work while in progress to her liking.

Here is a link to Cherouny’s “Painted” exhibition at Middlebury College:

http://middleburycampus.com/2010/04/15/painted-opening-skates-to-success/

Alan Storey has been working on various concepts for drawing machines throughout the past twenty years. In his definition of a drawing machine, he includes the concept of mapping human actions. In his “Device for Drawing the Movements of a Ballerina,”  Storey traces the dancing of a ballerina on a stage over a series of her performances through computer mapping. The end product is a paper with a series of lines delineating the ballerina’s movements.

Both Storey’s machine and my machine involve taking something with an untenable aspect – the movement of a ballerina and the composition of my Itunes library- and translating it to a two-dimensional version on paper. Without proper contextualizing, both products could be seen as “just a bunch of lines or dots.” When taken in context, however, the products become a visualization of something not commonly drawn. While both machines deal with the visualization of different art forms (music and dance) and create a different product each time they are implemented, they do so in a different way. Storey’s drawings rely upon the live actions and movements of the ballerina, while my dot vibrations revolve around the content of my ITunes library and the length of each song. Because of the human element in Storey’s machine, there seems to be an unlimited amount of possible outcomes for his drawings. While the number of different song variations that I can map in my library is exponential, there is an eventual boundary.

"Alan Storey: Device for Drawing the Movements of a Ballerina", Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Vancouver Canada, 2008. All images of this work are copyright © Ashley Judge, 2008.

Preface:

My drawing machine is primarily based off of the set of rules called Conway’s Game of Life. In this “game”, a grid of cells are either alive or dead. During each iteration, a live cell remains alive if it is neighbored by two or three other living cells, and dies otherwise, and a dead cell becomes alive if neighbored by exactly three other living cells. The results are surprising and, I have always found, incredibly aesthetic. I was introduced to it during Professor Gessler’s class Artificial Life, Culture, and Evolution. He added another dimension to the aesthetic properties inherent in Conway’s Game of Life by having dead cells change through a range of colors starting at pink, and eventually turning blue before returning to black depending on how long the cell had been dead.

My goal was to find a way to get this machine to produce consistently aesthetic results. Professor Gessler’s program always began with random configurations of alive and dead cells, and if left to run on its own, would reach a state of white “living shapes” (shapes that remain the same or oscillate throughout iterations) and dead cells. It is therefore good for a video, but not as visually impressive as a drawing. I initially thought I could gain better results by tinkering with the rules Conway set down, but that quickly proved to be a poor direction. Conway did a really good job. I decided instead that I should look for initial configurations that I created that often lead to aesthetically pleasing results, and to set down some meta-rules that would help lead to variation.

Steps:

1. Use Professor Gessler’s Conway’s Game of Life program.
2. Load an initial configuration of alternating columns of live and dead cells.
3. Run a random number generator to generate a number between 25 and 100. This is the number of iterations to run through before stopping the program.
4. Get a random number between 1 and 10. This is the number of cells to change the state of, since the initial configuration is a live shape. The user picks the cells my clicking more or less at random.
5. Run the program the specified number of times.
6. Take a screenshot.
7. Repeat steps 4-6 eight more times, starting each time with the configuration from step 2.
8. Generate random numbers between 1 and 9 until each number has come up once. This is the order the user will place the nine images.
9. Make a canvas nine times the size of a single image. Place the images from left to right, top to bottom, in the order chosen.

Reasoning Behind Rules:

I decided after much tinkering that I liked the rigidity of the column pattern. It allowed each image, and each final drawing to share a common beginning. It also helped that the results of changing a single cell in this pattern were visually stunning. I needed a way to have each part of the drawing be different though. To use this, I decided to use random numbers that impact how much the image will change from its initial state. The more cells that are changed in state, the more areas will begin to evolve, and the more iterations the program runs, the longer time it has to evolve. Because of this, in addition to the human randomness provided by clicking semi-randomly, all 27 of the generated images are different. I also wanted the machine to determine what order the images would be placed into the final drawing, so I put in the last number generation. The results of using this machine are interesting from a mathematical and computer science perspective, as well as visually impressive.

David Mayer

Machine: any physical contraption that is external from your own body that allows for the production of something new.

Drawing: the use of oneself or object to create a new image or object.

My drawing machine is a simple contraption that uses two plastic bottles, shoestring, two sharpies, and a ruler. I used a pull helicopter’s basic technology to wind up the bottles, with sharpies at the bottom of them, to spin around a sheet of paper, creating a drawing. While the drawing is not a wonderful masterpiece, it allowed me to examine how complementary colors look as they are just thrown around throughout the sheet of paper.

While I was playing around with my drawing machine, I was able to correct the process of how the bottles spun. In the first image (the green one) you can not see that many circles. However, in my last one, (red and green one) you can see that some circles were beginning to form on the paper.

The Drawing Machine

First Drawing Attempt

Second Drawing Attempt

Last Drawing Attempt

My machine consists of a pen, brush, or any drawing utensil balanced on strings so that it swings or moves like a pendulum or a washer weight.  The strings, attached to the pen on either side can be held by the artist or suspended between objects or places and moved to create a drawing.  The purpose of this machine is to dissociate the aspect of complete control from the artist.  Inspired by the “action painting” of Jackson Pollock, this machine can be used to let the artist “let go and unleash emotion” more freely.  It is a simple machine which can be used by any artist or person.  It is simply intended to create a different drawing experience, to possibly encourage a more free, chaotic and uncontrolled medium.

“Erosion Machine” by Roxy Paine

Roxy Paine is an artist whose works explore the natural and the mechanical. Some of his pieces have nothing to do with machines – his “Maelstrom“ was a collection of stainless steel tree sculptures put atop of the Met that were meant to make the viewer feel immersed in nature, but also to point out the clash between “the natural world and the built environment amid nature’s inherently chaotic processes.” His machines, though, are pretty intriguing and reminded me of our drawing machine project. One of his machines, “PMU” (Painting Manufacture Unit) is made of various metals, hoses and valves, turns on every two hours (throughout an exhibit), and creates several paintings composed of many (90+) layers.

While the meaning behind my machine and his are very different, they are similar in that they are works of art built by the artist to then produce more works of art; my machine created different drawing patterns while his created paintings. Both of our machines go through a tedious routine many times before they produce a final product – they are formulaic in nature. (One of his machines in particular – “Erosion Machine” – illustrates this.) Paine’s machines, though, are often used as metaphors or commentaries – his painting machine is supposed to meant to illustrate “artists and the works they create are nothing more than commodities, demoted to factory-like mass producers,” while his erosion machine is meant to demonstrate the “mechanical production of modern art.” My machine, on the other hand, was more of an experiment to see what kinds of interesting patterns a machine could make, when different tools were attached to it.

Chloé Marie Songer
Lasch, Seaman
Intro To Visual Practice
Drawing Machine

Roll of the die image selection.
Sources of inspiration and subjects for artworks often allude the artist. Until now, this creativity block has lacked remedy. Yet with this machine, the image selection is decided for the artist by chance, the rules are a game to exploring the images in a magazine, and the process is a way to select a subject without thought or creativity to worry about.
This machine requires the artist to reproduce an image from the magazine in drawing pencil (grey scale) as closely as possible. A human copy machine. The final reproduction should be between 20 and 50 square inches – just as a copy machine, the input must be proportionally scaled to produce an output within these constraints.
The goal of this machine is not to create an original work. This machine introduces the artist to a subject and hopefully the creatively limiting exercise will actually inspire later works.

Need:
-    2 dice.
-    Magazine/Book with images
-    Paper
-    Drawing Pencil

Process:
1.  Divide the number of the pages in the magazine by 2.

2.  Once at the middle of the magazine roll the dice, square the total number that you roll.
•    If even, flip forward that many pages.
•    If odd, flip backwards that many pages.

3.  Repeat dice roll and ‘square’ process.
•    If even, flip forward that many pages.
•    If odd, flip backwards that many pages.

- If Magazine is over 600 pages repeat process 3 times.

- If you hit the back cover, count remaining numbers back in.

- The final reproduction should be between 20 and 50 square inches – input must be proportionally scaled to produce an output within these constraints.

Example Products of Machine:

Growing up you learn in science class that a machine is some sort of apparatus that is used in the performance of work. But what exactly is work? By definition it is the expending of energy, yet there are a multitude of way to expend energy.  When conceiving of my drawing machine I reflected upon what I knew about conventional machines and the common thread I found was that all machines perform a certain system of steps to achieve a final result, whether that be something tangible or not.  Following a similar though process I conceived of drawing as an artistic process of creation that leaves behind some visible trace or path.

For my project I knew I wanted to work with randomly generated lines of text and I found inspiration for the means of presenting this text from paint by numbers and Fluxus event scores.  My machine consists of a set of steps that were given to people to follow The steps offered a way of generating lines of text based on a specific word number on a specific page of a series of randomly selected books. The participants were asked to relay the words back to me but were given no further instructions.  The instructions they were given is as follows:

Gather 6 books that are at least 100 pages long.

Pick words based on the following formula:

Book 1:  3^rd word on the 12^th page

Book 2:  9^th word on the 20^th page

Book 3: 18^th word on the 40^th page

Book 4: 30^th word on the 64^th page

Book 5: 42^nd word on the 76^th page

Book 6: 54^th word on the 94^th page

Relay the words back to me.

In this sense those using my “machine” were given a regimented formula of how to determine their text but were free to present it in any form they deemed fit.  To me this paralleled the way literal machines, such as those used on a production line, can often use the exact same mechanics to produce a completely unique product.

Below you with find 3 examples of the output of my machine.

Swirls of paint.

My machine is a fan with a brush attached to it perpendicular to the propeller .  The machine produces circular strokes of paint onto paper as the fan is turned on and the wings propel the paintbrush in a circular motion. 
The first part is that I produce a swirl of paint in the center of the paper with a certain color using my hand; then, I make a concentric circle using white paint. This swirl of paint is then held parallel to the fan, but perpendicular to the brush attached to the fan, and when the fan is turned on, the brush swirls the paint into more concentric circles. The end product results in a portion of the original swirl I created, as well as the swirls created by the machine fan.
I included some pictures of the fan and how I went about starting the project.

Jackson Pollock is considered to be one of the greatest abstract painters to ever live. Pollock’s work is inspiration for present day “action painting,” a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. This method is used quite often in the modern art movement and MOMA (The Museum of Modern Art) actually has an exhibit dedicated to his work. Pollock’s methods allowed him to create art far more quickly, with all of his paint scattered every which way. His influence can be found in other forms as well, as his method is now the subject of an iPhone application (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLKNh83Pqpo&feature=player_embedded).

Pollock’s techniques match very well with my own for the drawing machine. His “action painting” is very similar to the way in which I did my own project. While he used a brush to splatter paint on the canvas, I used a catapult to launch color on myself. Our specific techniques varied but our final result is very similar. His physical “machine” created random art that played with artistic perspective as well as the mixture of particular colors, as mine did as well. Pollock used to say he did it this way to feel like he was, “in the painting.” My machine put me right on the front lines of the painting, pointing out another similarity in our respective works.

Though some may not consider Carl Gustav Jung an artist, his Red Book is one of the most closely related works to my dream drawing machine.  As an avid dreamer, I write down my dreams every morning when I wake up.  Some dreams are vivid, strange, and colorful.  Others are mundane and ordinary.  I then decided to record these dreams by creating a machine that could draw them for me.  The idea of documenting dreams with text as well as images was what Jung did with his Red Book.  Jung was a close friend of Sigmund Freud, until they had a break caused by personal and theoretical differences in 1913.  Following this beak, Jung had a series of very portentous and vivid dreams, which he wrote down and later embellished with drawings (Art Therapy by David Edwards).  Though Jung was not thinking about a machine that could record dreams, he still recorded them manually to better understand his subconscious.  My drawing machine also aims to explain the emotions (using background colors) and main themes (which images appear the most) of dreams.  His Red Book has been displayed in the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

An image from the Red Book

During the conception of my project of destroyed books, I frequently turned to the work of Brian Dettmer. Dettmer’s work treats the material book as a sort of body which he dissects to reveal the innards and contents of the book. Yet in his dissection, the shell of the book disappears and the separated pages appear together in a layered plane. Dettmer views form and content as inextricably such that his alteration of material does not liberate either form or content from the state it is normally presented to us in but rather reconfigures content through this transmutation of material (for ideas of transmutation, I am draw to the work of Nasher favorite Dario Robleto).

In discussing his process, Dettmer notes this lack of control he deals with in carving the book. He is subject to the book and even in this transformation, he cannot escape its contents (or form). I too wanted to deal with the incapability of the content of a book’s inscription on a lineage of rational philosophy and illustrated this through these ultimately fruitless wounds to the text and form of a book.

Steve Reinke’s work “Anal Masturbation and Object Loss” seems more akin to the emotional and esthetic quality I was working with. Reinke highlights the false sexiness of psychoanalysis in this video work by gluing together the pages of a volume of psychoanalysis while explaining that this article with the same title of his work is in fact about fraternal death and constipation. What Reinke addresses is this constant fallacy in academic writing in which it presents itself to be something it is not. In my work, I sought to attack what I saw as an egregious and hegemonic trend in the history of philosophy (manifested and disseminated through books) which provides an all-too rational and humanist picture of the world and consequently limits rather than expands our place in the world. I see a similarity with Reinke in a certain focused vitriol which is directed at an object but not the source, illustrating a limit and failure of a school of thought.

A book's cover is spray painted, its pages removed.

An explanatory Hegel text is nailed shut, its covered obscured by the tools or the irrational artist after the end of art.

FIVE POINTS

INSCRIPTION: Inscription can be material and immaterial, visible and invisible. In its erasure, it loses its visual function yet maintains its presence in memory.

MACHINES: Bodies are machines, this notion is not new. It is a series of machines functioning collective and individually. Machinic function occurs cognitively and prehensively, functioning differently in different milieus, with different intentionalites (though not all machines, bodily or not, are intentional). In the realm of the intellectual, the cognitive machine produces rational discourse circulated as language – often in books.

BOOKS are machines of ideas. Books are drawings of letters. Books inscribe ideas. (Though books can function as other machines.)

THE ARTIST, in a romantic western narrative and in certain practices, is an affective machine. The artist exists before and after the intellectual discourse, gesturing toward the cosmos. The artist is rationally irrational. The artist, in a western narrative, ruptures and breaks from the intellectual discourse, seeking that which is beyond reason, seeking originality, breaking and appropriating forms, destroying to create.

DESTROYING books creates a wound on the image of the text as machine idea, yet its immaterial inscription endures. The legacy of Enlightenment thought endures in spite of these chinks in its armor. But destruction reevaluates and reformulates. What is Kant without Kant’s writing? What is political philosophy without material content? The artist as destructive machines opens itself to the guilt of destroying but enables in this destruction new textual machines, rebirths of these books, and most of all, new (re)inscriptions.

Maps have become a hugely profitable business in the art world. Sotheby’s and Christie’s covet old maps and atlases and sell them for thousands of dollars. It is not just ancient maps, however, that have artistic merit. Every map drawn is made with careful consideration: which pen to use, where to place the starting point and the destination, how to label the streets, which important buildings or landmarks to highlight, and even how to scale the drawing is. Is it a representation or a mathematical representation? My drawing machine created these drawings without being aware of what it was doing. I merely asked a series of random students “hey, how do I get to Devils Bistro? Can you draw me a map?” I then presented them with the option of using one of the sharpies I happened to have in my bag or, if they preferred, a basic pen. Students differed in where they made the starting point (sometimes they asked and other times just drew a comprehensive east to west campus plan) and which streets to label (some forgetting the names of street and thus either mislabeling or leaving names out all-together). Unbeknownst to the kegs of my machine, I was producing works of art with each map. Perhaps there is even some psychological reasoning behind how each made their drawing, but I was most interested in the spatial awareness each had. This drawing machine is one that can be used over and over again and creates different results every time. No two drawings will ever be the same but that is part of the machine’s beauty. 

Marius Watz is a Norwegian autodidact, artist, and graphic designer with a love for computers.  His project, “Drawing Machine 1-12,” spanned a two year period on the Odin website.  Each of the 12 machines drew one picture over the span of two months.  Watz defines a “drawing machine” as a “virtual machine with a set of rules determining how it moves and draws in a virtual space.”  His machine is computer software that relies on rules, such as the principles of movement and drawing strategies, to produce an image independent of the artist.  Because his machines use randomness, no two images will be the same.

The images produced by Watz’s machines use some of the same circular and swirling shapes as my machine did.  However, his involves less input from the artist, whereas mine requires the artist to use the different commands to make an intricate work.  Also, his “lines” are created by using dots of various sizes instead of the continuous strokes created by my pendulum.  I think we both defined machine in a similar fashion: it follows a set of rules to determine its motions.  While Watz’s machine is mostly a virtual one, mine is mostly physical.

An animation of Drawing Machine 12 can be found at http://www.unlekker.net/dm1-12/anim12.wmv

Both Lordy Rodriguez and I used maps as an inspiration for our art. His “machine” relies on retracing existing maps and embellishing them to make them into imaginary places that he desires or that he believes other desire. My “machine” relies on other people constructing maps out of what they believe is reality. Both “machines” create works that are not reality. Rodriquez’s works are clearly fantastical, though their elements of truth are meant to spark both a sense of familiarity and a feeling of uneasiness in the viewer. My works are more literal but often still unsettling because each person’s perception of the world is from a different point of view and thus no two of the maps are alike. What one person saw as the starting point differs greatly from another; some left out road indicators and curves of the road and just highlighted specific turns while others attempted to create an exact trajectory of the actual space.

Both Rodriguez and I recognize the beauty and relevance of maps as artwork. Everybody deals with maps in some capacity and so they are a familiar. The artistry comes from changing normal perceptions of reality of space and making the viewer think and consider these differences. Words and labels become as important as the images themselves as they reflect what the “cartographer” finds the most important aspect.

Here are my first three products of my drawing machine:

When brainstorming how to create and use a drawing machine, I knew I wanted to incorporate the human body as much as possible because to me, the human body is the ultimate machine. I came up with my machine when I was sitting in my apartment on a sunny day and got the urge to go rollerblading. As I child I absolutely loved rollerblading (I still do now!), and rollerblading is something that involves two machines: the human body and the physical rollerblades. The next day, I headed over to the Scrap Exchange and bought a bunch of items, including string, paintbrushes, pencils and tape, to use to turn my rollerblades into drawing machines. After that, I spent a few days perfecting the machine, making sure that the paintbrush and especially the pencil hit at just the right angle. The machine is simple to operate—you put on the rollerblades, dip the brush in paint if you are painting, and ride all over the paper for exactly two minutes. You cannot look down at the paper while painting. For cleanliness, it is best to cover the ground with scrap paper to avoid paint, pencil or ink marks.

http://www.ekac.org/cypher.photo1.jpg

Eduardo Kac’s piece “Cypher” is a do-it-yourself transgenic kit. It includes the media, tools, and protocol for a bacterial transformation. The synthetic DNA in the kit is a sequence, engineered by Kac, which encodes a poem. He designed the case of the kit to have the appearance of the artist’s book. Through his use of the four base pair code, Kac does much more than simply utilize the code to convey his poetry. He creates a systematic pattern to follow such that “poem and code complement each other in such a way that the code is absolutely integral to the poem”.

Our works are similar in that they both are based in science and explore single celled organisms. Though my work focused on a fungus that causes harm to the body and his piece utilized bacteria used for helpful scientific investigation, we both use properties of the organisms as input for our machines. These properties are intrinsic; capsule size as well as DNA are properties based within the organism. While my machine makes use of pathogens and transforms their output to create an image, Kac manipulated the output of his “Cypher” to express the product he wanted.

Additionally, Kac and I both create pieces that are interactive and involve those viewing the piece. Kac’s makes use of the viewer of the work by creating an interactive process. It is the viewer who puts into place the protocol and manipulates the organism’s DNA. In my piece, it is the fungus that is infecting the patient, or viewer, which supplies the input.

See more about “Cypher” here:

http://www.ekac.org/cypher.text.html

IVP1: Drawing Machine

Aubrey Frazzitta

Defining “machine” and “drawing”:

A machine here is distinguished as a mechanism to transform data input into a visual representation. The machine receives quantitative numerical input and transforms it into an image displaying only the qualitative characteristics of the data. Drawing is defined as the output of the machine. The images produced are fabricated locations and scenes and the machine produces them itself. Pathogenicity of the neurotropic yeast Cryptococcus neoformans is transformed into landscapes.

How the Machine Functions:

Cryptococcosis is caused by a fungal pathogen and affects more people in Sub-Saharan Africa than Tuberculosis. One characteristic linked to its virulence and subsequent pathogenicity is the yeast’s capsule production. This encapsulated form serves as valuable protection against the host immune response.  There are two varieties of the yeast: grubii and neoformans. They differ in the population they tend to infect the most. Neoformans characteristically affects singularly immune compromised patients, while grubii has the capacity to infect the immune competent in addition. The machine functions as an interface of pathogenicity of a particular strain and its representation in visual form.

The machine first is attached to a Zeiss fluorescent microscope, and a representative population of the culture is placed inside. The machine measures the capsule to total cell size ratio of each cell. Additionally, florescent tagging is utilized on the grubii varieties to identify them.

Taken From: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_FwBxHtQx2MI/SKZnnjZMJ0I/AAAAAAAAAGg/hldJqcfk7Qc/s320/Cryptococcus_neoformans_India_ink_stain.jpg

After calculating capsule ratio and distinguishing variety, the machine outputs a landscape image. The horizon line is the division between cell size and capsule size. Sky represents capsule, while land or water is representative of the rest of the cell. Presence of water within the landscape indicates var. grubii, while absence represents var. neoformans. Intensity of color represents the overall virulence of the strain according to collected data, with the most vivid color scheme being the highest risk pathogen.

Traditional representations of nature reference its vastness, uncontrollable demeanor, and underestimated ability to cause destruction. These same characteristics describe infectious diseases as well. Millions of yeast cells can be found in a single sample of CSF, no consistently effective treatment has been found for a number of pathogens, and organisms so unfathomably small are more powerful than many multicellular organisms. I thought it would be very effective to convey this parallel in my machine’s drawings.

Three Products of the Machine:

I took photographs for the products of the machine as this machine is not yet functional.

Product 1:

Var. neoformans with small capsule. Most likely from an environmental source. Relatively faded appearance demonstrates how the variety only affects the immune-compromised

Product 2:

Var. Grubii with average capsule production for its strain.

Product 3:

Var. Grubii with large capsules and vibrant colors. Most deadly pathogen of the set.

My machine involves both a process and an apparatus. It combines two modes of technology that I use on a daily basis to create a “drawing.” The apparatus is my cell phone, set on vibrate with marker tips attached to one side. The cell phone is placed marker side down at the top left corner of a piece of paper. Next, I opened up ITunes on my computer and shuffled my music library. I called my cell phone for the duration of the song, allowing it to vibrate in place, creating a “drawing” on the paper. Once the song ended, I stopped calling the phone. If the next song that came up on shuffle was country, classical, blues, or bluegrass, I moved the phone one rotation to the left. If, after several rotations to the left, the phone reached the end of the page, I rotated the phone back to the right. If the next song was rock, alternative, pop, or rap, I moved the phone down one rotation, until I reached the bottom of the page. Once the bottom of the page was reached, I began to rotate the phone back up if the next son was rock, alternative, pop, or rap. I repeated this process for the duration of ten songs, creating a drawing of the intensity and length of my music.

10 Songs on Itunes

10 Songs on Itunes, Starting with Rock Genre

10 Songs on Itunes, Mostly Rock and Country

Between You and I, 2006

Anthony McCall is an avante-garde film maker who records clips of projected light. The projection is a type of line drawing created by beams of light. In this sense it is a type of “drawing machine.” He chose to depict the process – that is, the way the drawing is created – as the art itself. This draws attention to the creation of space as oppose to the 2-D image on the floor.

This piece relates to the drawing machine I produced in a number of ways. Firstly, McCall too explores the nature of electromagnetic waves in his piece, although he concentrates on the visible spectrum (whereas I focused brain waves which are at a lower frequency). In another respect, both of our projects show an interest in the process not simply the final product. McCall uses film to show the progression through time; in my piece, I used type and nail pointillism, which are indexical of the way the line is put together, the “process”.

A machine, for the purpose of this project, is any set of rules/logic that guides the creation of a product from the given constituents.  For my machine, I worked on the idea of producing something finite and empirical from an infinite amount of possibilities (much in the sense of evolution by natural selection).  By making small colored balls of paper and tossing these randomly on a sheet of paper, this produces the chance element of the equation.  To introduce variation into the machine, I used 7 different colors: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, and a “neutral” color symbolized by brown; two balls of every color were made to add to the complexity.

In order to provide for a set of rules to make a localized machine, each ball of color is translated onto the by making a large dot of corresponding color directly underneath the balls for that color.  Then, each dot on the paper is connected to each and every other dot by the subsequent color of the dot; i.e. both yellow dots are each connected to every other dot by a yellow line, red dots with all others by a red line, etc; the neutral colors mentioned before do not produce lines, they only exist to accept lines from the other colors.  This produces a geometrical figure consisting of the primary (red, blue, yellow) and secondary (orange, green, violet) colors.  Below are some examples of works produced by this method:

Drawing Machine

Machine:

The machine that I will be using for this project will actually be a conceptual one. Instead of a physical construction there will be a set of rules that will “draw” for me, very similar to the purpose of software in a computer. Essentially, the goal of my machine shall be to produce consistently an impressionistic effect, similar to the artistic effects on Paint.net. Therefore, my machine is a biological one that attempts to imitate the actions of painting software. Because I will be copying 3 pictures I selected and not drawing them from my mind, I eliminate a majority of my artistic license.

General Rules:

1. Materials will only be paper and charcoal (one color)
2. No erasers
3. Smearing is not allowed
4. Movements or actions not explicitly stated to not be used are allowed

Specific Rules:

1. No vertical or horizontal lines are to be used. Shading only.
2. No slated lines are to be used
3. Only use of the side of the charcoal is allowed
4. Mistakes can’t be corrected
5. After every left-right horizontal stroke should be a horizontal right-left stroke
6. After every left-right slanted stroke should be a right-left slanted stroke
7. After 3 strokes on one object, move to another
8. No more than 5 seconds should be spent on 1 object at a time
9. Alternate between darker areas and lighter areas, avoiding the lightest areas altogether
10. Work from background to foreground

The Spirobot was inspired by the popular drawing toy, Spirograph, and physics concepts.  The machine consists of a table and a pendulum suspended above it.

On the table is a set of horizontal tracks and a set of vertical tracks.  A drawing tray sits upon the vertical tracks and has the ability to glide up or down the tracks (y-direction) and rotate both clockwise and counterclockwise.  The vertical tracks can glide left or right along the horizontal tracks, allowing the drawing tray to be moved in the x-direction.  The pendulum can also move left, right, up, and down and rotate clockwise and counterclockwise.  The pendulum’s motion is controlled by changing the angle the pendulum arm makes with the vertical.  At the end of the pendulum, there is a slot for the insertion of a variety of drawing tools (pencils, pens, markers, etc.)

On the front of the machine, there is a power button and a touch-screen control panel.  The motions of the different components of the machine can be controlled here.  Among the options are Start, Stop, Rotate (CW or CCW), and Move (U, D, L, or R).  The speed of the motions can be controlled as well.

Design produced by the Spirobot

Flower produced by the Spirobot

Sine curve produced by the Spirobot

For my IVP 1, I filled eggshells with different colors of paint and dropped them onto posterboard.  The colors marbled and swirled and mixed.  The artist whose work I chose to look at is Arthur Ganson, who is a kinetic sculptor.  He makes machines that perform simple tasks.  One of his pieces is called “Machine with Oil.”  Here is a video of what it does.  Machine with Oil This is a machine with a chain and gears that pours oil on itself.  It scoops up the oil in a piece that looks like a bucket on an excavator, and as the bucket rotates, it dumps the oil on itself.  The oil is kind of like the paint in my machine.  You don’t know what it’s going to look like after it falls.  However, all the oil is the same color, so you don’t get marbling effects, and the oil isn’t dumped onto paper.  But if you were to take a photo of the machine, you could get 3 different products of what the machine produces at different moments in time.  It would dump the oil in different arrangements/patterns/designs, and we would see that if we took a photo.  Another similarity between “Machine with Oil” and my IVP is that both machines are very simple in the task they perform.  Ganson’s machine probably took a long time to create, but both of our machines do something simple: spill paint and dump oil.

My drawing machine creates visual and musical compositions. I was inspired to create this machine, or twofold formula, by Kandinsky’s abstract compositions in which he incorporated musical elements. The instructions for my machine are the following:
1) Choose any song.
2) Mix two paint colors according to the title of that song. (Let the title inspire your selections.)
3) Play the song aloud.
4) Dip the wooden ends of your paintbrush into the two separate colors.
5) Drum to any rhythm within the song that you so choose.
Your final composition is simultaneously aesthetic and musical as it reflects both your visual and aural response to your selected song.