Jack Tait
" 'P'harmonic"
machine drawing
"Rotor 6"
machine drawing
Jack Tate
There are five machines, a cam driven harmonograph with added turntable, a simple turntable, a drum bases sine wave machine and two similar NSEW rigs which as the name implies are able to draw a line in the four compass point directions. In addition to these analogue machines I have also in the past programmed a computer/plotter device in Octal. Examples from all machines are shown. What all the systems have in common is that they can be programmed to generate a wide variety of images, from programmer/timers which output very simple instructions which give rise to quite complex drawings. The drawings are usually enhanced in Adobe photoshop and output via an inkjet printer. Their mathematical content is that the machines themselves are governed by carefully chosen ratios between the X and Y axises and the timer/programmers are designed to output sequences of numerical instructions with an added 'quasi random' element which relies on out of phase cams taking a long time to reach a repeat point. I hope this is enough to give you an idea of what I have been doing for many years as a designer/printmaker.