Intro to Visual Practice / Fall 2010

The dream drawing machine allows people to express their dreams, without even having to remember what happened.  This machine will operate similarly to an fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging).  It will be hooked up to the person’s brain, most likely through leads.  Then, when they are dreaming, the machine will record the images that appear into a computer database.  Once it collects the images, the machine will then produce a drawing depicting the main idea of the dream.  It will do this by taking into account the most frequent images that appear in one’s mind.  This dream drawing machine can also associate emotions and feelings within a dream to colors and tone, adding another layer that sets the mood of the situation.

The following productions are examples of what the dream drawing machine could create.  I created these from dreams that I’ve had in the past.

I once had a dream that I was transforming into No Face, the monster from Spirited Away, in a room that was full of optical illusions.

I had a dream that I was talking to an old schoolmate who I hadn’t seen for a long time;  he was wearing blue lipstick.

In this dream, the world was ending at 6:32 PM EST.

Amanda Jordan IVP #1

The Mechanics of Written Language: A Visual Representation

Regarding language as an apparatus of symbols for the conveyance of thought, we may say that, as in a mechanical apparatus, the more simple and the better arranged its parts, the greater will be the effect produced. -HERBERT SPENCER, The Philosophy of Style

As Merriam Webster’s Dictionary defines ‘machine’ in its noun form as being, “an assemblage of parts that transmits forces, motion, and energy, one to another in a predetermined manner,” the written language becomes a machine. In English, its parts are comprised of letters, symbols, punctuation which organize to form words, only to create sentences and phrases, to then forge a message to be communicated from one individual to another. With this, chose to visually depict the mechanics of the written English language; that is to say, fundamental letters (vowels e, i, and o) that organize with other vowels and consonants to produce words and then achieve the goal of the written language. Not only is this a representation of a machine, but the mode of production of these works can be described as somewhat mechanic as well. It follows:

1. Using a dictionary of English language, tear out pages from a specific letter from which you want to build. Apply these pages to the canvas with the desired substance.

2. Using the specific beginning letter shared by all the words on the canvas, make a stencil or cut out of the letter. Trace this over the canvas.

3. Choose a primary or secondary color to paint the letters, though varying tint and/or shade.

4. Choose a separate color which lies beside first chosen color on the color wheel in which to mix/overlap with first color.

Final product: A mechanically produced representation of a letter – a fundamental part of language – while language in itself is a machine or device of communication. The works are both literally and figuratively “an assemblage of parts that transmits forces…in a predetermined manner” (Merriam Webster’s Dictionary).

Machine: anything that uses energy to perform or assist in the performance of human tasks; the machine modifies an input (data, raw material, etc) to produce an output, or product.

Drawing: the deliberate creation of visual art.

The operation of my machine requires human energy. The inputs are the raw materials of tea and coffee. My machine consists of a colander, a spatula, a slotted spoon, and a sieve. The colander is raised on a stand and holds the sieve inside of it, and the operator holds the spatula and slotted spoon underneath the colander.

The operation of this machine is straightforward but it allows for different permutations. One must pour tea and/or coffee into the sieve and it filters down through the four instruments to land on the paper, creating a randomized splatter pattern. Different permutations are achieved through the angling and arrangement of the spoon and spatula as well as through the volume and rate of input.

Anne Hart

Drawing Machine

The above link is to a video of the drawing machine in action and the below picture is of the machine before it was used.

My machine draws for me when I fill eggs with paint and drop them onto poster board.  The machine works as follows.  Take an egg and poke a small hole in the smaller end of the shell with a needle.  Poke a slightly larger hole in the larger end.  Blow on the smaller end so the egg comes out through the bottom of the shell.  Fill the egg with the three primary colors of paint through the larger hole.  I used red, blue, and yellow tempera.  Place a piece of poster board on a hard surface, and drop the egg onto the poster board.  The machine (the egg filled with paint) will smash and splatter paint on the poster board.  The pain will swirl and mix to create different colors and designs when it is let out of the egg.  The color theory is displayed here by the greens, purples, oranges, and neutral gray/browns created, and the eggshells get painted as well.

I took this project very literally, trying to simply create a machine that would make an interesting drawing. I tried and failed to use my car to make patterns on the road with paint, and ended up using the fan in my room to make my machine. My initial idea was to tie a bunch of markers to my fan and see if I could record the path it made by holding paper up to the fan.  But after trying this, I noticed that the markers changed paths in a way that I hadn’t envisioned and that I couldn’t track them with paper, since they were making a 3-D, and changing, shape. (They started out hanging, then as the fan sped up they moved outwards and finally were moving at the same level as the fan.) So I tried instead to imagine, that if the markers were drawing in space, what that drawing would look like. Then, for my project, I thought of three different artistic tools you could attach to the fan, and thought about what patterns they would create. The three tools I used were markers, dripping paint brushes, and spray paint cans (pressed down on hold so they would be constantly spraying). All of these products, when attached to the fan, would create different patterns and paths (or “drawings”) of color. To show these ideas to the class, I drew (in photoshop) the products that each tool + fan combination would produce (that is – what pattern it would leave in the air or on the wall), so people could get a visual. The point of my project ended up being thinking of how to make a machine that makes one path (the fan) into something more complex by attaching different drawing tools to it. If you used all three tools I tried at once, tying each drawing tool on at a different length, you could almost fill the entire room with color.

Below are my photoshop drawings of what each drawing path would look like.

1) Markers attached to fan:

2) Dripping paint brushes attached to fan:

3) Spray paint cans tied on to fan with the spray button pushed down.

matheny_s_ivp1_explanation

matheny_s_ivp1_reproduction1

matheny_s_ivp1_reproduction2

matheny_s_ivp1_reproduction3

by Noelle Suaifan

I fashioned my drawing machine using acrylic paints, a water bottle, and water. First, I burned a hole in the bottom of a standard water bottle using a lighter. Then, I deposited a few dabs of acrylic paint through the new hole, setting the paint on the center of the bottle’s bottom. I held the bottle over a piece of paper and poured some water through the bottle’s regular opening. The water drizzled down into the bottom, where it mixed with the paint and dripped through the hole. I shook the bottle back and forth, holding it about twelve inches over the piece of paper. As a result, the watery paint splattered over the paper, creating a random design each time I performed the process. I found that by adding more water, I received a less defined, more formless drawing. When the paint and water were mixed properly, the drawing was more defined. My machine worked better than I thought it would, and I made three good products out of the process.

Here are some pictures of me performing the process. The last three images in this post are my completed products.

Follow this link to use my Drawing Machine:

<http://openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=12626>

For this project, I constructed a machine (wrote a program) that allows users to generate unique content (drawings) with only a keyboard and a mouse. The code is written such that a background color of black,  gray, or white is randomly assigned, then the individual is free to choose from a number of drawing tools, for example, line, bezier curve, and/or rainbow drip, which similarly operate with random functions in the parameters. This means that the user is not  restricted by his or her access to artistic media nor limited by previous experience.

For this assignment I chose to define “machine” as something that does my job for me. That was the easy part. The hard part was finding out what exactly “my job” is. When looking through my past pieces and thinking about what happens when I sit down to draw I noticed that color is the main ingredient in all of these. Rarely are my pieces not bright and all over the place. To create a machine that would spurt out color for me I combined water-balloons, poster paint, thumbtacks, and darts to invent a sort of dart throwing, balloon popping, paint splattering game. It was a huge mess, but I had a lot of fun doing it. I definitely could not have created these on my own without my machine.

For my drawing machine, I chose to make a camera.  I was thinking back on our last assignment, on light and color and thought my machine could draw through the medium of light.  Henri Cartier- Bresson once said “photography has never been more than a way into painting, a sort of instant drawing.”  Thus, a camera is the ultimate machine for an instantaneous drawing.

The camera I made was a simple pinhole one.  I had previously made a rather intricate pinhole in the past. However, without the proper resources here I chose to make one out of a can, a cylindrical vessel painted black, a bit of tape, and photo paper.

The camera worked surprisingly well and I had little difficulty finding a consistent shutter speed at around 30 seconds.

Machine: a device which assists in performing work/producing something. In my rendering of a machine, I designed a system which will help someone produce a drawing centered on color dynamics.

Drawing: Any form of visual art that requires intentional processes.

Step one:

Choose a group of color pairings from a random number produced by a graphing calculator.

The groups are:

1. Blue and Yellow
2. Orange and Green
3. Red and Yellow
4. Blue and Orange
5. Green and Yellow
6. Black and White

On a graphing calculator (TI-83 Plus), select MATH, select PRB, select 5: randInt(, select range of numbers you want to choose from (in this case randInt(1,6)), select enter to generate random number.

Step two:

Choose four colors within each group of color parings from a random number produced by graphing calculator.

Blue and Yellow:

1. Blue
2. Indigo
3. Blue Green
4. Cerulean
5. Dandelion
6. Yellow

Orange and Green:

1. Green
2. Orange
3. Apricot
4. Red Orange
5. Green Yellow
6. Yellow Green

Red and Yellow

1. Red Violet
2. Violet Red
3. Red
4. Dandelion
5. Yellow

Blue and Orange

1. Blue
2. Indigo
3. Blue Green
4. Cerulean
5. Scarlet
6. Orange
7. Apricot
8. Red Orange

Green and Yellow

1. Green Yellow
2. Green
3. Yellow Green
4. Dandelion
5. Yellow

Black and White

1. Black
2. White
3. Gray

Step 3:

Choose one template amongst five (blown up sections of of Piet Mondrain’s Sera) to base the location of each color in drawing from a random number generated by a graphing calculator.

Step 4:

Match each crayon with perspective area on template based on the number it was chosen. Ex.) the first color you chose will go in section one.

Step 5:

Cut chosen crayons into small pieces using scissors until you have enough of each color to very lightly spread over perspective areas on template.

Drawing 1

Step 6:

Place wax paper on top of template, place crayon pieces in perspective areas, place another piece of wax paper on top of it, place cloth over wax paper and iron over wax paper until crayon pieces are all melted (30-60seconds).

Drawing 1

Rule: in cases where the same random number is repeatedly generated within any one step, generate more random numbers until you get a different number.

My First Drawing:

Color Group 1: Blue and Yellow
Colors 2, 5, 3, 4: Indigo, Dandelion, Blue Green, Cerulean
Template 5

My Second Drawing:

Color Group 5: Green and Yellow
Colors 4, 1, 3, 5: Dandelion, Green Yellow, Yellow Green, Yellow
Template 3

Drawing 2

My Third Drawing:

Color Group 2: Orange and Green
Colors 4, 3, 5, 2: Red Orange, Apricot, Green Yellow, Orange
Template 1

Drawing 3

Sunhay You

What is a “machine”& What is “drawing”?

The machine is a processor that transforms one data input into a visual form. My machine will require an individual to provide the data input. I will be using the changes in electromagnetic brain waves and turning them into a sculptural drawing in two main steps.

Brain waves are reflective of the way we process our environment – that is, the way we think. This drawing machine will serve to observe and compare the way different individual think about the same piece of fiction.

The inspiration for this piece came after I read an article in the magazine “Wired” called “This is Your Brain on God.” The author investigated the work of Michael Persinger, a neuropsychologist who was trying to show that paranormal belief can be induced through electromagnetic pulses. It made me make the connection between personal, unique beliefs that individuals have and their own self-generated electromagnetic brain waves.

Within this project, I define drawing as the piecing together of visual information (such as joining of dots as in a dot-to-dot drawing book)

How does it work?

Step One: The participant will be placed within an MEG, a medical device that is used to detect patterns of brain activity. He/she will be asked to read a short piece of fiction aloud. The MEG will record their brain waves during this time.

Step Two: This step will involve the transformation of EM wave into a drawing. There are three possibilities:

Option a) instead of using black ink to mark each point, it will pierce a small hole into the paper. This can also be seen as a type of “pointillism” (see “image one”)

Option b) the data points will be formed using steel nails. This can also be seen as the joining of the dots formed by the nail heads. The relative strength of the EM wave will be read as the relative length of the nail at a given point in time. This will form a type of “nail pointillism.” (see “image two”)

Option c) this drawing also relates the idea of pointillism. I will take the text from which each person read and use them as the composites to form the curve sketches by the EM wave.

(this, as well as the two other options, are overlaid in the file named “overlayofthreeimages”).

The three examples here have been overlaid to enable the observer to compare the three lines – compositionally (hole/nail/text) as well as conceptually (as the EM waves represent alternate thinking processes of three individuals as they read the piece of fiction).

Link to article: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.11/persinger.html

An example MEG:http://sites.duke.edu/artsvis54_01_f2010/files/2010/09/Video-13-0-00-00-06.jpg