A Line, Crashing

A Line, Crashing is a project investigating the performative and anthropomorphic side of the pen plotter, a type of drawing machine. What happens when a robot takes over the very human act of drawing and loosely scribbling things on bits of paper? Does the machine have a mind of its own, or is this an illusion? By bringing a machine like this to life, with replicas of human body parts attached to it, this visceral sense of unease is made palpable. When it performs, it makes fast movements and shakes violently. It dares you to step closer to it.

This project takes inspiration from various surrealist/Dada techniques, some of which have a surprising connection to the generative Al systems of today. Take for example the ‘cut-up’ technique, which involved cutting out sentences from books and magazines, and rearranging them randomly. Large language models like ChatGPT work similarly, but with much more sophisticated maths. So sophisticated, in fact, that you can invest large amounts of emotional energy into a conversation with it, if you allow yourself to.

The visual result combines all of these techniques: a cut-up poem, images of hand gestures, rough scribbling, and lots of smudges. The poems are engraved into the paper beforehand and slowly become visible during the exhibition, piece by piece.