There’s something magnetic about the pen plotter. I can’t fully explain why, but maybe it’s the machine’s personality: it’s old, it’s loud, and it’s stubborn. Sometimes it draws an awkward streak I didn’t ask for and tears my paper. It’s not supposed to, but it does.

Watching how it behaves makes me think of it as more than a machine —although, ‘more than’ might not be the right way to put it. After all, it’s just a machine. a goofy one. Sometimes its unexpected behaviour feels like an act of defiance, I’m definitely projecting my own frustration onto it but its hysterical response is very convincing.

There's a kind of physical dialogue between us, through back and forth commands and responses. The commands feel like directions for performance: pen up, pen down, circle, square, fill, etc. like I’m giving instructions for it to move in ways that I can intuitively comprehend. because those commands translate into familiar movements —lifting, pressing, drawing— a physical language I can follow.

But what if those commands do more than just trigger an execution? The way the plotter responds, leaving a new mark on the paper, feels like it could be more than just following a command. These recognisable, simple commands shape physical reality, they alter what’s on the paper in front of me. The moment an instruction is given, it creates something through that digital utterance.

Since I started treating the pen plotter unlike any other machine, I’ve been wondering: Is the pen plotter performative, in the sense that its actions bring something into existence rather than just executing commands? If it's not, then what would it take for it to be?

Mechanical Mark-making

Whatever the command, what the plotter leaves on the paper is a mark -whether a dot, line, or shape. The question is what it means to make a mark. Let’s say, in painting, the act of mark-making has long been regarded as a manifestation of applied or gestural energy, or to put differently, as the artist’s bodily language translated onto a surface. A brushstroke, or any other stroke, carries intention, spontaneity, hesitation and the felt experiences of the artist. In this way, the mark becomes both the meaning and the vessel holding it.

I wonder how this understanding of mark-making applies when the marks are made by a machine. Marks are considered evidence of presence and time, can that still be true when a mark comes from mechanical movement?