Echo Yang is a graphic designer / art director based in Taiwan. She is fascinated by exploring the joy of graphic representation and printing experiments in both commercial and self-initiated field. As part of her MA work at the Design Academy Eindhoven, artist and graphic designer Echo Yang created a fascinating series entitled Autonomous Machines that transforms analog devices into autonomous drawing machines. The objects, ranging from a tin chicken toy to a windup alarm clock to an old Walkman, are all obsolete now in the age of ever-advancing technology and digitalization, but Yang breathes new life into them by using them to create self-generated art.
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Through this project, Yang explores the notions of information design and modern generative design processes, in which designers use algorithms to create a variety of different outcomes. She applies these modern generative design processes to old-school, analog devices in order to reveal their internal algorithms. “By making use of the specific mechanical movement of a particular machine, I attempt to transform them into a drawing machines in the simplest way,” the artist explains. A tin toy with a paint-covered cotton swab taped to it dabs paint in repeating circles. A hand mixer with paintbrush bristles attached to it creates abstract swirls of paint and ink. Each machine, once wound up or turned on, is left to its own devices to create repetitive, but complex, works of art.

A collaborative marking making excercise run with Level 4 illustration students using card, string wire to create devices that adds distance between pen and hand. 

The machine itself is difficult to describe. “It works the way a printer does,” says Nic. “A square canvas with a bar going from left or right, a bit like an Etch A Sketch with three handles.” The drawing implements are each attached to the bar, moved with pieces of string left, right and up or down. A bike lever is then used as a trigger to take the pen off and on the paper. “It’s weird because you’re never doing a drawing motion, you’re pulling at a piece of string. It’s not even like you have three hands on one pencil, you have three hands on an object controlling the pencil.” For the construction to work Will, Jay and Nic would have to direct each other constantly. “It’s like trying to tell somebody exactly what you’re thinking for four hours,” elaborates Nic. “Because there’s three of us, we got better at it, but at the beginning we didn’t talk that much and soon learned you have to talk all the time. If you don’t talk about every little thing, you can forget that someone is going from left to right and you’re not, for instance.”

https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/nous-vous-illustration-310517