User:Alessia/Plotter art

by Alessia
🔙back to menu🔙
Personal essay evolved after a sudden presentation about pen plotting to some unsuspecting friends (> their random comments here included), inspired by zulip messages and insomnia

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

What even is a pen plotter?

> Can I say that it sounds funny as a name? plotter
> Oh wait I saw them on tiktok there are plenty of videos of these m a c h i n e r i e s
> Yes, kinda trending

They are iconic devices, magical pioneers of digital graphic reproduction, machines that left an indelible mark in the history of visual art + computer graphics and in each of our hearts. Even if sadly pen plotters were replaced by large format inkjet printers, we are now experiencing a new renaissance for them, even outside the xpub bubble. With such nostalgic appeal they attract even more. Artists from all over the world acclaim them again as their new favourite tools, to be safeguarded, cherished, resurrected.

Modern digital plotters, which are still in use today, evolved from analog XY writer plotters that operated along two axes of motion. They were the most efficient way to draw vector graphics, rather than raster images, making them ideal for tasks like drafting blueprints, graphing data, and producing large-format maps.

> I don’t understand, weren't you doing things with the radio?
> pen plotters look even scarier than computers I swear

Now some historical facts! 🖼

One of the earliest plotters was Konrad Zuse's Graphomat Z64 in 1958, a punch card controlled plotter, driven by two gears. Frieder Nake, THE Algorist (along with Vera Molnar, Georg Nees, A. Michael Noll, and Manfred Mohr) used this machine, for which he developed a software for his experimentations. One of the first mechanical and commercial plotters was the CalComp 565, from 1966, a drum plotter that worked by placing the paper over a roller that moved the paper back and forth along the X axis and the pen moved back and forth along the Y axis.

> luckily you are showing images I wouldn’t understand a thing without them
> damn diabolic m a c h i n e r i e s

The progress of plotter technology was a key part for the development of CAD (Computer Aided-Design, software used by designers and engineers to create detailed digital drawings and models of objects or structures). The Computervision's Interact I plotter, was designed to be a combination of a digitiser and a plotter, serving as an interactive terminal. Users could copy a sketch, see it on a screen, edit it, and then print out the changes.
The great change for pen plotters arrived with the crafting of the flatbed plotter. As the name suggests, the surface to be drawn on was laid out flat, different from before, as paper was rolled up on a drum. HP was the big guy for commercial plotters. HP's first plotter was the 9125A flatbed plotter, introduced in 1968. Again HP, the HP 7470, born in the 80s, introduced the grit wheel mechanism: rollers pressing at opposite edges of the sheet to control movement. The pen is mounted on a carriage that moves back and forth in a line between the grit wheels. Plotters were also used in Create-A-Card kiosks, to make little postcards, that were available for a while in supermarkets. They used the HP 7475A six-pen plotter.

The most used modern pen plotters at the moment are the one from AXidraw by Evil Mad Scientist Labs, their firmware is open source: https://github.com/evil-mad/axidraw.

> I’ll still use my hp printer
> I don’t understand how this is connected to the radio

I am done, done, let's speak about art c’mooonn.
Firstly, pen plotter art: is it really art?
There isn’t much about plotter art in general, in books or on the internet. Grouping people together is always a way to ghettoise them, what does it even mean to be a pen plotter artist? Is there any kind of typical philosophy that is embedded to practising art through this kind of machine in particular? Each artist brings their unique perspective and creative approach to the intersection of art and technology. Art romantically is creativity, but in the real world art is money. We saw this in the fascinating rise of NTF that stained pen plotter art as well :)  

> NFTs are still a thing?

I got to discover (from an Interview with Frieder Nake by ‍Mark Amerika) that THE algorists, even if they were programmers, still had people writing codes for them. This made me smile, remembering all those great personalities, those artists whose names are printed into history books, whose real artistic production is reduced to the bone, maybe even less. Who knows how many works of art have been created with the creator, to whom these works are attributed, moving their brilliant hand just to sign them, while studio cadets sweated over fresh canvases? Or in this case: over keyboards.

> uuh we are getting into the social critique part now. spicy.
> like my internship you mean. I feel this.
> Idk, maybe they were paid this time, not enslaved like renaissance boys

I had prepared a very long list of names, all contemporary artists, as I wanted to find mainly artists that are still involved in the art scene, who have jumped from the bank of computer science to the bank of visual art, falling into exhibitions, museums, glossy newspapers superficial interviews. I don’t really want to show it anymore (hahaha no it's here actually list pen plotter artists ). It is a very different world from our studio and perhaps from those who see pen plotters in a more sincere, curious, way of rediscovering forgotten tools. I also wonder how much my own gaze is directed at the art industry more than at the creative act itself, there would be too much to say. I will not tell you about this whole list, just some hints.

> but can the plotter do other stuff other than plotting?
> maybe make food? Sing a song?
> what’s the point of making something do what it is expected to do?

Generative art! Talking about pen plotter art without mentioning computer and generative art is impossible. Pen plotters undeniably played an important role in the evolution of both of these art movements, as they were among the earliest digital tools available to mathematicians, scientists, and programmers to push that immaterial boundary between art and science.

Mafred Mohr, Vera Molnar Frieder Nake, George Ness, Herbert W. Franke, are all great science-computer-artists that experimented with generative art and visualised their ideas through pen plotting. It’s interesting to see how pen plotting built a bridge between new digital computer technologies and traditional printmaking techniques. I am speaking about dirty hands, acids, and staining inks that were at some point being linked to the cold grey plastic reality of computer hardwares. A whole new world.

Pen plotters, as computers, weren’t really naturalised, common to have around, Mohr had to use the ones from the Paris Institut Météorologique. I imagine what the guys there would have thought about this person using their machinery, for art??? Other remarkable pioneers of pen plotter art still included under the generative art umbrella are: Harold Cohen, Mark Wilson, Peter Beyls, Roman Verostko, Jean-Pierre Hébert, Casey Reas.

A lot of exhibitions, a lot of thirst for recognition. I get the feeling that all these artists have only attempted to create randomness and chaos, without actually creating it. Some sort of extreme quest of control over that human desire for chaotic disorder. Randomness by computer is still perceived as the total antithesis of randomness by humans, but is this really so? it's not that we really know where randomness originates and develops in the human mind, it might be more logical than we think.

> that’s too philosophical, show us some weird things

Artists that use pen plotters as mediums, that are mainly involved in the generative art movement, explore human-machine interactions (Sougwen Chun), even seeing them even as conversational (LIA), focusing on dynamic-fluid-esoteric forms and structures to get over the feeling of rigidity and inflexibility of the pen plotter involvement (Alida Sun). They let plotters be performative devices and storyteller, creating spaces that aim to even just enhance human interactions (Jürg Lehni-Jessica In), creating illusory fake organic structures, playing between harmony and chaos (Tyler Hobbs - Zancan), self-building frankenstein punk machines with paintball guns (Antigoon), working on data visualisation and sound design (Peco). There are so many artists out there that are involved in the pen plotter art, but, if I may, in a quite superficial way. The machine is the machine and it will draw the generated artwork. But isn’t there something more?

It’s somehow sad that plotters have been regarded merely as tools, peripheral tools. Yet, how wonderful the moment when a symbiotic relationship is built between the materials involved and the human action of letting the machine be a companion more than a device. Boundaries blur, and the machine assumes a quasi-autonomous presence in the artistic process. A dynamic of interplay, welcoming complexities and material vulnerabilities that working with this kind of machines introduces. Maybe even embracing the unexpected as a sort of performative act. Could this be seen as fetishization? Probably.

Anyway, it was Nake who was one of the first to sign his works with NAKE/ER56/Z64, acknowledging the computer system and plotter as integral collaborators in his artworks. The discussion about the legitimacy of recognizing hardware/software as authors, giving them a characteristic of humanity, is still very much open, now even more so than before. If it is the machine that produces the artwork, does that make it the only legitimate author?
It seems that James Pyle, from CalComp, thought so, when he held an international art competition in which plotters had to be the main tools used. Most of the art pieces didn’t have any attribution to the human artist involved in the creation of the pieces, just to CalComp :)




There is something mystical, enigmatic, about how pen plotting challenges what is the conventional notion of what drawing as an act is.
Drawing is viewed as an inherently human process, we are quite proud of it. Art history is based on that epic moment when some person decided to draw scenes of hunting and drugged shaman dances inside caves. We glorify the act of visual creation. The endlessly repeating of that act by the plotter alters that sense of sacredness that arises from the artist's personal touch, it makes some existential insecurities emerge.
Let’s embrace this! Let’s embrace a vision of the plotter as a machine that disrupts, add that transgressive element into the artistic process that is so much needed.

Is it still ok to go on? Usually, it is the end part, in a presentation of this type, that tries to be all nice and pompous and glossy. It is the grand finale, so get to the end.
After having conversations about pen plotting with both Thijs and Manetta, who I thank deeply, I would say that I may have gotten a little bit entangled in my typical flat bullet point fine art analysis, like I would speak about established art movements (even if art is not established at all, movements don’t even exist in the real sense of things). I would say xpub experimentations got over my head while I was exploring all those polished generative art online exhibitions. I should speak more about what pen plotting is for us as a community of students, and what might be. Indeed, pen plotting has been a great community tool shaping for us. It became the glue that let us stick together more in the studio and let us know more about each other, how cheesy!
As we are all from different backgrounds, we let machines be our companions in what is our own personal digging into experimental publishing, media archeology, skill building, tool making, performing acts, all done collectively. A plotter culture is emerging, it surely is.
For so long, I tried to destroy the wall between me and pen plotting as a technical tool, and only thanks to the skills and energy of my classmates did I succeed partially. Perhaps my role is to silently rant, more or less, about the techno-philosophical-exciting aspects of (lovely) metal boxes.

As I believe our xpub bubble is a bubble but still influenced by the outside world, I am looking forward to connecting with other bubbles, conquering the world together or something. There must be life out there!



(*ˊᗜˋ*)/ Thanks to:
Stefano, Edoardo, Thijs, Manetta

Reference Links:
https://www.hpmuseum.net/exhibit.php?class=4&cat=24
https://www.rightclicksave.com/article/an-interview-with-frieder-nake
https://computerhistory.org/
https://monoskop.org/images/7/7b/Noll_A_Michael_1967_The_digital_computer_as_a_creative_medium.pdf
https://ethw.org/First-Hand:Howard_Wise_Gallery_Show_of_Digital_Art_and_Patterns_(1965):_A_50th_Anniversary_Memoir (Computer Program for Artists: ART 1 Katherine Nash, Richard H. Williams)

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1572264
https://www.shapr3d.com/history-of-cad/computervision
https://medium.com/nightingale/pen-plotters-are-the-perfect-tool-for-data-storytelling-b05c71ceadd5
https://www.generativehut.com/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16495236

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦