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Show HN: I built an interactive plotter art exhibit for SIGGRAPH (lostpixels.io)

167 points by cosiiine ↗ HN
I'm enthralled with using pen plotters to make generative art. Last August at SIGGRAPH, I built an interactive experience for others to see how code can be used to make visual art. The linked blog post is my trials and tribulations of linking a MIDI controller to one of these algorithms and sending its output to a plotter, so that people may witness the end-to-end experience.

20 comments

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beardicus
very nice work and documentation. i did a little "plotter photo booth" with a homemade pen plotter many years ago and it was a ton of fun. folks love to see things moving off-screen!
cosiiine
Thank you! That was actually close to my first idea for this installation. I wrote some code to re-imagine a raster image as a vector, but I couldn't find a way to keep the detail while also keeping the drawing time below 10-15 minutes. That's how I arrived at the MIDI idea.
foobarian
Something that struck me while watching the video at the top is how much I enjoy the low latency of the software UI to the buttons. Very cool!
yetihehe
It's much harder than buying ready made plotter, but you can do a much faster plotter yourself [0]. Probably a little cheaper too.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX90X4rVUr8

Karliss
If you compare against the new hobby plotters -> sure those are somewhat crappy. I am a bit surprised about how much they cost. Those plotters are essentially using the same parts as low end 3d printers, but have half the axis, no heaters, and simpler controller controller boards. Considering that Ender3 goes for $150-$300 why do something like Axidraw or iDraw are closer to $500-$1000? I guess pen plotters now are much smaller niche compared to 3d printers and the effect from efficiency of scale is much bigger than I expected even if most parts are widely available.

But if you look at the commercial pen plotters that were made for doing actual work like HP 7475A - those things fly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe9VWvtvNtg It's mostly vintage models, but you can still occasionally pick them up on ebay and other marketplaces for a price that's comparable or better to the new hobby ones. There are also new vinyl cutters that you can attach a pen, but since the main requirements are different they aren't as fast.

joemi
I love it. I've been thinking of generative art in the physical world somewhat along these lines for a while now but haven't actually gotten around to the "physical world" part of these dreams yet. Mostly just been having fun coming up with interesting generative stuff in Processing. Your system seems really well designed, and that UI is pretty great. I'm jealous both of the well-designed system you made, and that you can use it to make things (I have many bare walls I intend to one day fill with generative art I've made).
cosiiine
Plotters fit so well with generative art. I highly recommend considering purchasing one! In fact, I learned about them on HN in 2018, and now using them to make art is my full time job.
AstroJetson
You lucked out being able to get the plotters. https://www.evilmadscientist.com/2024/bantam-tools/ Evil Mad Scientist has been acquired by bantam-tools so plotters are out of stock for awhile, along with some of the cool additions they made.
Solvency
Where's the news saying they'll be out of stock for a while? Why do you believe this?
beaugunderson
Well, you can't buy them from EMS anymore and the art tools page on Bantam says:

"THE BANTAM TOOLS NEXTDRAW™ WILL BE AVAILABLE IN SPRING 2024."

stefs
but it already is spring 2024
cosiiine
I've been following this acquisition closely, as the new machines look great. There are some new homing features, along with upgraded servos. They appear to be in the assembly phase at the moment and are still targeting "spring".
blazerunner
This is a really nice pair of a physical plus digital interface. I like that the button actions are clear in the 'composition' mode but the faders and knobs are not - makes it a bit more playful as you need to watch as you adjust values to understand what's changing purely from an output perspective rather than thinking in terms of parameters.

Novation Circuit (at least the OG) did this with synth parameters with similar effect - you need to listen to hear the effect, as each patch you could be changing a different parameter (for better or worse).

Nice writeup and great-looking project, I wish I could play with it in real life!

cosiiine
I’m so glad you picked up on that! It was my goal to encourage folks to let their curiosity lead them through the experience. I was quite surprised seeing a few people sit down for 20-30 minutes straight just to use the app… my thought was the plotters would be the center of attention. Others even asked if I could release the app for them to use later, which I would love to do at some point.
blueboo
Classic generative art project. TouchOSC would’ve been a good fit
dmje
I love everything about this. Pen plotter. Art. Midi. Programming.

In total awe of the skills here.

Ace!

lioeters
What a fun project it must have been, for the maker and the audience.

This part made me sad though:

> I spent $99 on an Apple Developer account only to sideload my application on two iPads. It was a decent compromise.

There really ought to be some consumer rights about running your own software on your own devices.