Plotter artists

It is quite remarkable that the plotter has been around for so long and the only digital device capable of deploying quality, well known, permanent fine arts material like Arches paper and India ink, and that so few artists used it. It must be said that there are certainly constraints using a plotter, like working exclusively with lines (but engravers accepted that). But the determining factor must have been that little or no help, software or support was available to technically-challenged artists. As the plotter itself is now displaced by efficient but impersonal instruments, this page will assemble information and links about plotters and their history, plotter artists and their work.


It must be noted that there has been many attempts at drawing machines other than computer controlled plotters, among which

• Marcel Duchamp Rotorelief (clip).
• Jean Tinguely's Meta-Malevitch, Meta-Kandinsky, Meta-matic series (with #9, Painting made with #20 by Klara Hulten, with Marcel Duchamp), Homage to New-York, Cyclograveur, etc. . . (1959-60),
• As the maintainer of this page has built drawing machines with Lego and FischerTechnik in the 70's, others with LegoDacta in the late 90's, spinning top based devices (with Athanas Lolov), as well as pendular devices, etc. . . multitudes must have done so,
• The San Francisco Exploratorium and the Ontario Science Museum have displayed pendular drawing devices for their audience to experiment with.
• Camille Goudeseun has built an Harmoniograph, of which he had learned from TomMcEwen.
  [ The harmoniograph consists of a pendulum with two degrees of freedom, a platform atop the pendulum, and a pen which draws on the platform as the pendulum moves around. The pivot of the pendulum is a few inches below the platform. The pen is free to move up and down, as will be necessary if the platform is flat (more generally, nonspherical). The pivot has very low friction (my device uses two knife-edge bearings at right angles). The pen should also have low friction; a counterweight helps in this regard. ] . But many call similar instruments Harmonograph...
• There has been a caricature machine displayed in Japan with input from digital camera and output by brush strokes in the 90's.
• After Ernest Chaldni and Jules Antoine Lissajou: Osmo Valtonen, Nitin Shawney/Chris Dodge, and Jean-Pierre Hébert have worked on sand tracings by various means and systems.
• IAA has built drawing machines from power tools, The Machines.

Many artists have used the plotter for their work over a long period of time. They developed their form, their themes and their experience quite independently, and all achieve a good mastery of their medium and a very personal style. They are:

• Colette and Charles (or is it Jeff?) Bangert
• Harold Cohen
• Hans Dehlinger
• Darel Eschbach (1) (2)
• Paul Haeberli (1) (2)
• George W. Hart (1)
• Jean-Pierre Hébert
• Atelier Ho! (1) (2)
• Wolfgang Kiwus
• Manfred Mohr
• Vera Molnar (1) (2)
• Kamram Moodjedi
• Frieder Nake
• Georg Nees
• Michael Noll
• Roman Verostko
• Mark Wilson (1) (2) (3)

Look for a group exhibit of plotter artists as Roman Verostko has endeavoured to set one up.

• Far from boring digital certainties, rendering on plotter preserves the charm of traditional drawings for their amateurs: spontaneous effects and plays of ink and paper (detail x 5) and of brush attempting to follow the path of a pen (detail).
  
• Different use of the medium, or back into the history of drawing: silver point on prepared paper (1) and graphite lead on paper (2) & (3) by Jean-Pierre Hébert .
  
• Bruce Shapiro's witty, hands on inventiveness crafts inspired tools for original expression. Bruce may well be pointing at what artists expect in the future : a new breed of devices that industry has not been able to provide on artists terms, for artists needs. Bruce Shapiro's egg plotter is a most surrealist piece in itself.
  
• Homespun plotter (1) and (2) by Ben Shapiro (twelve), so much more than a toy.
  
• Different use of the medium: Roman Verostko's plotter handling the brush, and a resulting brush stroke.
  
• Roman Verostko installing his overwhelming plotted masterpiece.
  
• Different use of the medium: acrylics on linen (canvas stretched on an Alphamerics flat bed plotter) by Mark Wilson.

The technology of plotters is still changing in 1999, witness the nanoplotter: "Northwestern chemists report making the world's smallest plotter, a device capable of drawing multiple lines of molecules -- each line only 15 nanometers or 30 molecules wide --with only five nanometers separation. They lay down a grid of lines made of 16-mercaptohexadecanoic acid. Then dots of octadecanethiol are placed at pre-calculated positions using the grid for precision positioning. They plan to use this process to make ultrahigh density arrays of different organic and biological material and nanostructures. I would plan to use it for nanoart! ".

Anyone who is a plotter artist or knows one is welcome to contact the maintainer of this page contact