Hands in the Land of Machines
Last Thursday I used the system to make drawings live at the Autodesk artist in residence show. I created a CAD model of 12 hands arranged along different axis, converted that CAD file to G-Code, and used my laser guide to draw the G-Code while I followed by hand. After each mark, I used my palm to smear the charcoal in order to account for the presence of layers that would build in darkness as successive layers were added. I preformed the drawing live to emphasize the attention to being human (with all of the imprecision, labor, and messiness that comes along with it) in response to an overwhelming attention to technologies that are clean, virtual, simulated, and magical. This drawing took about four hours and the charcoal took about two days to be completely cleaned off my hand.
Drawing Hands from Laura Devendorf on Vimeo.
