drawing machine research

So the task for our next session is to make a 'drawing machine/device'! It's got to be something that produces a drawing aside from the conventional method of putting pen to paper by hand.

It seems that we, the students of this sketch innovation module, are not the only ones attempting to create devices that create drawings for us. I found this drawing machine on Dezeen magazine's website, which is a simple wind up toy produced by the company, 'All Lovely Stuff' (see http://www.dezeen.com/2012/12/22/drawing-machine-wind-up-toy-by-all-lovely-stuff//). It uses easy to find objects- a clothes peg, cotton reel, felt tip, and rubber band- which are assembled together and then make drawings when the cotton reel is wound up, and let go.

As I continued my research, I got very excited by stumbling across the work of Echo Yang.
You can find her website here. (it's worth a look!)
Yang is fascinated with digital technologies that now allow designers to be driven by computer processes to produce outcomes that aren't completely planned or expected. Rather than having in mind exactly how the end design will look, many users of digital technologies play around with machines, algorithms and software to generate automated responses. However, Yang wanted to apply this 'automated' approach to old analogue technologies. She undertook a series of experiments with various analogue objects that are now considered as 'old technology', using them as implements to draw with. Rather than creating her own algorithms with state of the art technologies, her work exposes and depicts the inner rhythms, functions and workings of old technologies.

Alarm clock and pen drawing 

Handmixer filled with watercolour 

nodding bird drawing (with the help of a cotton bud and paint)

Hoover and ink drawing

I really like how Yang has almost hijacked objects to expose how they work, by using them to create drawings of the functions that they normally would perform. The results are really beautiful, and I think they serve as a great reminder of the wonder of all the objects and world that we take for granted and overlook around us....when really, even the most mundane, day to day objects can produce fabulous things, if we can only see them differently!

I am feeling very inspired. I like this idea of 'drawing' processes that usually go unnoticed, or unrecorded. It would be interesting to experiment with this within my practice in Textiles, perhaps creating some way to record my sewing/ironing/creative process as it happens....

For next session, I already have an idea for my drawing device that I'll present- but this is definitely an area with plenty of potential to explore and delve deeper into!