drawing machines, radio crafting, reading and repairing
recent creative experiments from Max Dovey - Summer 2024
Drawing Machines
It’s July, its hot and I’ve been outside as much as possible in gardens, parks & playgrounds enacting experiments in automated drawings!
WriteOut 1 - a self portrait using pulleys, string and a blue sharpie (5th July 2024) (alternative link on YouTube)
I’ve been playing this month - exploring how I could combine physical movements and explore kinetic energy to design some lo-fi mechanical drawing instruments and image making automatons.
I’ve been publishing one a week for this month of July over on my Instagram and haven’t had a chance to reflect or contextualise on them yet…
For those of you that enjoy the mechanised beauty of plotters check out this archive clip from an episode of BBC’s Tomorrow’s World from 1970 where an engineer struggles to impress audiences with portraits made by his incredible homemade painting computer.
Going further back, you can explore the variety of novelty drawing automata from 16th century onwards on this wonderful online database ‘Drawing Machines’ created by the artist Pablo Garcia. Eclectic designs and Illustrations of different drawing machines are listed and categorised and you get the sense of the scope of custom devices that were invented and applied to develop understandings in science, architecture and the arts.
WriteOut 2 - a swing drawing (12th July 2024) (alternative link on YouTube)
I’m thinking out loud about how these devices automated perceiving environments. Drawing machines mediate between source and representation and produce informatic visual languages based on mechanics and mathematic modelling. I’m considering how sighting grids informed maps, architectural planning and navigation systems or how geometric drawings provided accurate ways to visualise astronomy and understand the solar system.
WriteOut 3 - Sun Plotter. A solar powered spirograph produces sun like symbols. (published on 19th July 2024, alternative link on YouTube)
Last week I re-configured a low cost drawing plotter into a solar powered drawing automaton and was surprised at how each curved pattern was different and each one echoed pictorial representations of the sun (also known as solar symbols).
I will be making crafting more of these prototypes while the sun is out and considering these slightly bigger garish questions 🤢...
Do mechanised drawing tools illustrate a time of symbiosis between art and science when engineers and artists built explorative devices to expand how society perceived, visualised and understood the world?
Are drawing machines devices that read / write (data in / data out) and produce visual information that mathematically models environments?
Could a DIY arts based approach to drawing machines support more expansive creative methods in understanding how data practices subjugate the environmental sciences? (e.g. objective monitoring, mathematic modelling, abstraction and data reductionism prevalent in current scientific knowledge and culture).
Workshops
In other recent entangled moments….
I participated in a co-delivered workshop at Central St Martins titled ‘Extractivism and Mobiles: things in my phone and the right to repair’. It was delivered by artist and co-conspirator Shinji Toya and Restart Project. We were guided on how to dismantle (and put back together) smart phones and bought up to speed with the latest in right to repair movements campaign to lobby for international laws to lower e-waste and reduce carbon emissions.
In June I received a beautifully made free zine from Shortwave Collective an international feminist DIY radio collective (you can get one too from their instagram). The zine contained illustrated instructions on building your own AM radio wave receiver using low cost and available material (e.g. magnetic wire, tent peg, bog roll) and i cannot describe to you the thrill and joy i got from putting this together, sticking a tent peg in the ground and hearing the faintest crackle of white noise coming down this cobbled together listening device. I highly recommended giving this a whirl and a brilliant activity to do in campsites or while high up outside this summer.
Exhibitions
Reverb at 180 Strand - slightly random show but does have some resonant moments, visiting the Hi-Fi Listening Room Dream No.1 made the ticket price sort of worth it.
Don’t worry I Won’t forget you at FormaHq curated by Êvar Hussayni and Sarah Hamed is on till 10th August.
Fields of Vision - 25th July - 19th September 2024 at Blessed Projects in Kennington looks worth a visit.
Reading
Parallel Minds by Laura Tripaldi - short concise conversational chapters on the intelligent properties of materials from spider webs to slime.
No More Fossils by Dominic Boyer - every energy industrial revolution has been built on the extraction of the dead life, Boyer examines energy productions attachment to necrocapitalism and asks if electric energy could be different.
Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet - collection of essays on marking art in the anthropocene.
Thanks for your time, as always if anything resonates with you or you have suggestions or responses please reach out I enjoy sharing what’s on my mind but the best thing is receiving comments from friends far away. ✍️
Have a great summer 🌞
Max