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#plotterart

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Last year, I gave a number of talks on the subject of pen plotters / drawing machines, and how they have been used in different ways to realise different forms of art.

I wasn’t immediately able to share the main talk (the closing keynote from QCon London 2024), but I posted about the shorter edition that I delivered at Electromagnetic Field, and I’ve also written about the distinction between computer art generated using algorithms, and generative AI creations.

It took some time for the video to become available to share, but you can now take a look at the closing keynote that began it all, on the InfoQ website: Where is the Art? a History in Technology. I really enjoyed researching the subject.

This year, I plan to tinker with building more of my own plotters, in different formats.

Plotting with paint

Next up, we have our sixth (!) Wimbledon Art Fair – next month, May 8-11. We’re still working with the plotter and pouring paints, and have upgraded from the AxiDraw A4 SE to a larger NextDraw 1117 for some of our more recent work. If you’re in the neighbourhood, do come and take a look!

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https://andypiper.co.uk/2025/04/17/pen-plotters-and-the-history-of-computer-art/

Continued thread

When does an abstract arrangement of lines begin to resemble a memory? When does a collection of brain cells begin to form an opinion about the world? When does a series of neural networks and machine learning algorithms become self-aware? I asked myself these questions a lot while working on this series.

𝙎𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝙎𝙚𝙩𝙨 𝙐𝙨 𝘼𝙥𝙖𝙧𝙩 is a long-form series of paintings created with a robotic pen plotter. The robot follows instructions produced by a generative algorithm that creates a unique output each time it runs.

Multiple sine wave oscillation functions, combined with procedurally generated noise, alter the size and orientation of hundreds of paint strokes, using one of seven color palettes.