This machine routinely creates chain artwork

Artwork may be very private and we regularly think about the method of creation itself when evaluating the ensuing piece. Does a sculpture have extra creative worth when molded by human arms slightly than a 3D printer? Most would say that it does. However what if the automation was, itself, a part of the artwork? Yuichiro Katsumoto explored that concept with the “Renment (alpha)” chain artwork machine.

It is a bit like a big pen plotter, besides that it “attracts” with chains as a substitute of ink. Because the machine’s toolhead strikes across the desk following the paths of characters, a spool slowly drops metal chain into the type of these characters. After the machine finishes spelling out a phrase or phrase, it reels the chain again in and the method repeats. 

Within the printed video demonstration, it writes out the phrase “we forge the chains we put on in life” coined by Charles Dickens.  

The machine has three axes: the linear X and Y axes typical of a pen plotter, plus a further rotary axis for the 3D-printed chain spool. Katsumoto based mostly the design on DIY Machines Ltd’s espresso desk kinetic sand artwork machine. An Arduino UNO Rev3 board controls the machine’s stepper motors by means of an Arduino CNC Defend V3.51, which is appropriate with Grbl and may settle for any g-code of that taste. 

Katsumoto created “Renment” with help from JSPS KAKENHI Grant Quantity JP20K12125 and displayed the piece at SIGGRAPH Artwork Galley ’24.