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Salone Milan 2011 Preview: "Drawingmachine" by Eske Rex at MINDCRAFT11

By Ray Hu - April 6, 2011

in Salone Milan

Yesterday, we got a glimpse of some of the leading-edge Danish designs that will be exhibited at MINDCRAFT11. Today, we take a closer look at one project that caught my eye: Eske Rex's "Drawingmachine." (Which is not to say that the other designers' projects are not worthy of elaboration, just that Rex's work happens to represent the artsy end of the spectrum.)

The sculpture, for lack of a better term, does exactly what its name suggests, though this description obviously leaves a lot to the imagination. The press release does a better job: Drawingmachine is a construction involving two pendulums, each suspended from a tower construction and connected through "drawing arms" and moveable joints. A ballpoint pen resting on a drawing surface covered with paper is mounted at the point where the pendulums come together. The pendulums are set in motion by hand, and their movements are represented on the paper. The movements of the pendulums affect the entire room, and the experience engages the beholder's body. While the rhythmic repetitions cause the beholder to pause, the drawing emerges on the paper.

Requisite video teaser after the jump...

While the cyclical drawing patterns recall a toy from the not-so-distant past, the raw pyramidal frame conjures Da Vinci, and rightfully so; according MINDCRAFT11, "Drawingmachine" and the Spirograph alike owe a debt to a 16th-century innovation: The technique of using weights and pendulums was invented in the Renaissance and applied in the so-called Harmonograph.

Who knew that those sets of plastic gears, lying forgotten in attics abound, actually hold the key to complex harmonic motion?

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Derek Treadwell

13 years ago

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Machines like these were being designed by Paul Henry from 1960 and exhibited at the Institute for Contempory Art in London in 1968 in an exhibition called Cybernetic Serandipity. Also in that exhibition were examples of very early computer graphics and CAD. Any Google search under Cybernetic Serendipity will pull up a huge amount of information and images.
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Mart

13 years ago

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what kind of pen/ink delivery device are they using there? No ordinary off-the-shelf pen would stand up to this sort of use surely.
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Geoffrey Stocking

13 years ago

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This makes me think of the work by a Boston based artist, Andrew Mowbray. At the deCordova Museum in 2009, he exhibited a wind powered drawing machine. Check it out here under the Tempest Prognosticator (www.andrewmowbray.com)
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sophie gaur

13 years ago

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Fantastic! This is the Swing-o-graph on a larger scale! Swing-o-graphs were popular for a short period in the early eighties. I still play with mine on and off!

http://www.hktdc.com/dir_en_manufacturer/Hong_Kong_Swing_O_Graph_Suppliers.htm
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