Margot Gersing- Looking Outwards-06

Fish or Bird?

For this week I found this really fun project done by a man named Larry Cotton. He was is a power-tool designer and part-time community college math instructor. He was inspired by an article written by Charles Platt and Aaron Logue about a how to make a random number generator out of simple hardware that creates an unlimited amount of generated noises that could then be converted to high and low digital states. Larry Cotton, was inspired by this project and decided to use it to create abstract art. He took the RNG and made a drawing machine that used two motors to randomly control a pen.

Drawing machine with pen hooked up.
drawing machine

I love this project because of the hybrid digital and physical nature. It is so cool that the project came from a digital RGN, to physical hardware, to another machine (drawing robot) which makes physical mark making. In the final images, he also scanned them in digitally again to color and finish.

More drawings from Larry Cottons project
scanned in and colored

The other great part about this project is Larry lays out all the steps he did in an article so others can also do it.

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