Pen Plotter Portrait


2025
  • black ballpoint on coated stock
25 panels, each 8.5 x 11in


The work is a celebration of automation and examines the transactions between human and machine during mechanized processes.

  • List of steps:

    I recorded a video of my plotter plotting a hatching pattern across two sheets of letter
    sized paper using my phone.
    I kept quiet during the 40-minute duration of the pen plot.
    I then took a still from the very middle of this video using the shortcut command shift
    four to screenshot.
    I then enlarged the still by 4 times and stretched its width to fit the dimensions of 24
    sheets of letter sized paper. Landscape orientation in a 4x6 grid. (34 x 66in)
    I then tiled the image accordingly using Illustrator across 24 artboards.
    I then exported the individual artboards as PNGs and used Photoshop's automate batch function to apply my dithering action across all 24.
    I then converted these images into SVG files for the plotter to read.
    I set the plotter to fill in the black dithered areas with the same hatching pattern on the original sheets.
    I loaded two sheets of letter sized paper at a time. Each plot took around 5 hours.
    I repeated this process 12 times.
    I did not clean the adhesive mat.
    I did not calibrate the pen plotter.




that is all.