Machine Drawings

You can purchase drawings in my shop.

Read more about my recent drawings at the A La Luz blog.

I am interested in the role of machines as part of the extended mind, especially when it comes to creative activities. We are used to using tools to create things, but there’s something interesting that happens when that tool is sufficiently complex as to bring its own unpredictable biases into play. We’re used to thinking of robots as devices of infinite precision, but that really isn’t the case. In making these drawings, I start with writing an algorithm, and then render the results of running that algorithm on paper using familiar tools like fountain pens controlled by a simple robot. The resulting image bears the hallmark not only of my original idea expressed algorithmically, but also the biases and imperfections brought about by the physicality of the machine. As with much of my work, I find that including a robot as part of the process leads strangely to an outcome that is more organic, and perhaps even, more human.

Most of these drawings start with data from field recordings and geographical information of the place where the recording was taken, so that each is a piece of highly abstracted landscape art, capturing something of a place that would otherwise be invisible.