The History of Drawing Machine in One Drawing Machine

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The History of Drawing Machine in One Drawing Machine

April 16, 2012

Machine Drawing Drawing Machines from Pablo Garcia on Vimeo.

Picasso may have considered the computer useless, but he never saw how one could draw. “Machine Drawing Drawing Machines” explores a CNC machine’s illustrative capabilities through a series of facsimile drawings depicting twelve historical drawing machines. Each of the images represents a canonical device that introduced a technological shift in the way we observe the world and its contents. From Albrecht Dürer’s “Dürer’s Door” (1525) and Sir Robert Hooke’s Portable “Picture Box” Camera Obscura (1694) to the Drum Plotter “560″ (1959), the new prints cover the gamut of amazing, manmade machines that function(ed) both as an extension of ourselves and also as an autonomous being seemingly capable of its own intuitions and insights.

Devised by Pittsburgh-based artist Pablo Garcia, the project ironically highlights the possibility and obsolescence inherent in all machinery, with the CNC router effortlessly scrawling the painstaking detail hard-won by its precedents. The prints are available in a limited 4-edition set, which can be purchased through the artist here.