Drawing Machines

Nadja Gaudillière-Jami and Chris Dähne will present the joint work accomplished in past months within subprojects B3 and C1. The common research focuses on digital drawing tools, looking into the following question: Does the digital intervene in the thought process at work in drawing and the trace it leaves on paper?

Highlights of the work include the outcomes of the Drawing Machines Seminar lead together with Mehrzad Esmaeili the past semester at the TU Darmstadt and that will be continued this semester. Both machines made by and drawings produced by the students have allowed us to explore the digitalization of the drawing gesture. A collaborative essay written in parallel interrogates the dialectic between analog and digital drawing gestures and the drives towards imitation, automation or translation that guide practitioners. Finally, as we will show, framing the works to be shown during the Fall 2023 AO Exhibition has led us to interrogate the shortcomings of singling out digital characteristics in drawing processes, and to open new research directions.