ballpoint, smooth paper
ballpoint, rough paper
black pen
brush pen
Design Studio 4.022 | MIT Architecture
March 2020
Instructors: Jeremy Jih
TAs: Danny Griffin, Alexandra Waller
This series of drawings was produced by randomly generating Voronoi diagrams in Grasshopper, subdividing each resulting cell and connecting the division points to the central point, then deleting the Voronoi boundaries. These drawings aim to examine the drift produced in the transition from the digital world of Grasshopper to the analog world of the pen plotter.
The pair of drawings created by ballpoint pen showcase the effects of the differing surfaces of the paper types on the resulting drawing. In the image on the top left, the roughness of the paper causes the ballpoint pen to draw accidental dashed lines, creating the shimmering effect near points of density. In the image to the right, the only different variable is the smoothness of the paper. The second pair of drawings was created by a thick black pen (left) and a deconstructed brush pen. These drawings seek to explore the mechanism of the pen plotter, and the points of high and low pressure.