Thinking back to wanting to create a machine that worked with movement and gravity, I went and looked at some arrtworks.
Robert Howsare
Howsare artworks interested me a lot because of the geometric markings that his machines creates. His machine called the Drawing Apparatus records movement by having a pen attached to a wooden ‘arm’ that is pinned to two playing vinyl records. The recording of the movement creates precise geometric lines.
Recording movement that creates geometric designs is something I would like to create in my next art machine. But rather having a machine create the lines, I want something more organic.
Meg Rodger
Rodger is a scottish artist who heavily involves nature into her works and saying she “works creatively with natural phenomena, taking [her] inspiration from the complexity, strength and beauty of the oceans and the wild lands.” as well as that “[Her] work is from the perspective that humans are not the central but merely part of these naturally occurring systems, and cycles that are complex, integrated and vast.”
I like Rodgers work because she uses the organic environment as a machine to record marks, in her many works called Wind Drawings. In these work, Rodger set a pendulum, making a stand with a pen attached to string in the centre, and paper weighted down by rocks. The machine works with the wind, as the wind from the environment pushes the string, it moves the pen which records it movements.
Meg Rodger, Wind Drawing, 2021
Meg Rodger – For TOAST
With my research, I would like to combine the ideas of recording marks from a natural element and to make marks that have a geometric pattern. A machine I think that would achieve this is a pendulum that will release paint as it swings. The machine being gravity- the natural element- will influence the pendulum to swing when let go from a height. And as it swings, paint would be releases and hopefully record it’s movement onto a piece of paper place underneath it.
http://roberthowsare.com/rational-aesthetics/drawing-apparatus/, Robert Howsare Drawing Apparatus, Accessed July 22 2021.
https://www.toa.st/blogs/magazine/lines-of-beauty-in-the-studio-with-meg-rodger Lines of Beauty, Toast Magazine, 30 March 2021.
https://www.megrodger.com/ Meg Rodger, Accessed 22 July 2021