Researching Machines

What is a machine?

An apparatus that uses mechanical power

A device that transmits a force

Efficient and well-organised group of powerful people

A person who asks

Something dependant on rules

A system

Bruno Munari 'Useless Machine'

Set abstract painting free by placing it in context of space and time.

The function of the machine is to encourage the viewer to contemplate their childhood, however the sculpture itself does not have a use.

Questions what a machine is and the use of it.

Andrew Byrom 'If h is a Chair'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmhuWNO_VZU 
Video explains his process in designing type. Used pictures of road signs as the form to produce a typeface. Saw typographic forms in objects such as masters, adapting them to create a full typeface. Saw a chair as the letter 'h', informing a full typeface, then applying to furniture design to generate furniture. Using this design he kept finding new materials, which created new constraints for the design, e.g. neon signage needing for all the lines of the letterforms to connect.

John Conway's Game of life

https://playgameoflife.com 

A cellular automaton. Uses a set or rules leading to the cells forming various patterns throughout the course of the game.

Friedrich Soennecken's Schriftsystem

Developed a method using a grid and metal elements that are either arcs or straight lines that creates glyphs.

Julien Priez

Boogy paper uses pattern to create the typeface.

Drawing Machines

A simple kind of machine that can create a typeface is a drawing machine.

Examples of drawing machines:

Job Wouters and Roel Wouters, Rainbow gun, a tool that can acquire many spray paints to create the form. https://vimeo.com/8838517












Julien Priez has also experimented with using multiple drawing tools to create calligraphic type with multiple lines for the letterform.

My own experiments using drawing machines:

I tried taping different pens together to draw letters with. The first is two thick pens in which the red bled into the blue, creating purple tones. I then taped together three pens closer together; they layered over each other nicely, not bleeding into each other. I then attached these three pens to a compass, creating the letterforms just using the curve of a compass.