Almost a year ago, I joined a makerspace called NYC Resistor. Aside from being populated with amazing people who are working on crazy projects (here, here, here, and here, for example), it’s given me access to new technologies, new directions, and new skills I never knew I had.

The result is a bunch of new work that has kinetic and robotic elements. I’m building robots!  I’m cutting things with lasers! And these new tools are proving very useful for interacting with “old” technologies like mapping, handwriting, and frame-carving.

 

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A newer piece with a laser-cut wood frame.

The best part, though, is having new tools to work on older ideas. For years, I’ve been working on landscape drawings in pencil and pen that had photographic or mechanically reproduced elements in them. Most of the time, xerox or inkjet transfer was the best method of having that mechanical detail built into the piece, but I always pined for a slightly more integrated and refined method.  Well now I have it! A drawing machine that uses the same pen or pencil that I do:

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A robot drawing machine that uses pencils and pens to help make my landscape drawings and maps!

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The robot in action.

And here’s a link to the machine doing it’s first drawing.