Drawn to customisation: the machine as artist

This paper accompanies a demonstration at ACM SIGCHI - 'Designing Interactive Systems' 2016 in Brisbane, Australia, of a 3D printer that has been hacked to automatically create and draw 2D portraits of its environment using a pen. The paper and practical work calls attention to the novel process of using 3D Computer-Aided Design (CAD) algorithms to mimic the artistic practice of drawing abstract imagery of a live scene, displaying the growth of line-work in real-time to the viewer and allowing them to control the quality of the abstraction by the length of time the computer is allowed to view the scene through a webcam. Ultimately the artist/designer is responsible for creating a system whereby infinite drawings are possible, rather than drawing a singular image themselves, challenging the role of traditional designers and artists as technology allows for ever more intuitive and interactive methods of creative expression.