Guodu-Plot

My interpretation of a gradient/transition from order to disorder was inspired by design drawing warmups that I do everyday. It mostly begins with drawing straight lines, then drawing a few 2D shapes (squares and circles) then moving to 3D forms, the most important being the cube.

Here are some warmup pages from my sketchbook:

Deconstructing the cube, and ultimately drawing, it is all about connecting points and drawing lines. I wanted a gradient that gave the sense of building upon each other, from dots, to lines, to squares, to cubes. I also started to think about machines or robots “warming up in drawing” because by design, they are really meant to draw complicated, generative, and parametric designs that humans typically can’t, or at least not in an efficient, and perfectly precise manner. How do other people perceive machines drawing imperfectly? I’m intrigued by the idea to have a machine mimic my drawing style.

In the end, the concept that I had didn’t translate too well into code. I was too focused on the idea of a machine mimicking my drawing style and I realized too late that it’s extremely easy for a machine to draw built in drawing functions, which have taken me months to master. Secondly the drawings and code are in sections, they aren’t really related or parametric. For next time, I’ll focus more on parametric design and compositions that challenge the plotter more, or are appropriate for laser cutting.

While I was really excited to compare my hand drawings to the plotter drawings, the plotter had some technical difficulties. I apologize for not having the intended deliverable, but here it is in on laser cut 1/8″ plywood:

Power was a little too high for my first laser cut, but it was interesting to see certain parts poking through.

Processing Screenshot: