Exhibitionist Drawing Machines

Abstract

Drawing, as both an object and an action, involves an entanglement of an author, the surface of their work and the space that the work occupies (both the space of production and the space of presentation). However, this entanglement between the drawer and the drawing is problematised by the mechanisation of the drawing process. If drawings are produced by machines, how does this relationship change? What new drawings emerge? What part does an author play in the drawing and how much are they implicated in the drawing that is produced? This article explores this question through the design-led research project Exquisite Drawing Machines, which involves making machines that make drawings.

This research is conducted by playing the surrealist game of the exquisite corpse with fifteen spring-wound drawing machines. One of the difficulties that arises from this research is how to mediate the role of the drawn surfaces of the exquisite corpses, the installation of the Exquisite Drawing Machines as objects-in-themselves, and the temporal-spatial event of play. I will explicate the relationship of these three modes and examine how these drawing machines and other strategies of automatism might surface qualities of the unexpected in the production of drawings.

Read the full article online at: https://drawingon.org/Issue-02-01-Exhibitionist-Drawing-Machines