TOPICS: DESIGNING DRAWING MACHINES in Spring 2019 (AR3091)

The goal of this class is, in a part, to re-create these kinds of historical drawing machines and understand their use and their influence on art.

Another part will encourage students to create and design other types of drawing machines for other visions of the world.

This class will give the opportunity to approach design methodology, from the definition of a problematic to the conception and the realization of objects.

For this course the semester will be divided into two distinct parts. In the first section, students will be able to re-build historical drawing machines: the camera lucida with a concave mirror and with a refracting glass, the pantograph, the camera obscura, the black mirror. With each new machine, students will learn the basic principle of mechanics and physics they need. They will be able to apply them by building their own drawing machines and they will be asked to use them and compare the result with historical pieces of art.

The second part of the course will be more creative. Each student will have to design his own drawing machine according to the meaning he/she gives to “vision”. He/she will have to define precisely the problematic that the machine will answer. He/she will have to design this machine in the limits of his/her practical and technical resources.

At the end of the semester, this project will be the focus of an exhibition, showing both the machines and the drawings they can produce.