Drawing Through Dialogue with a Plotter

In addition to creating works by hand or through photography, I also draw using a pen plotter. While each piece always begins with a hand-drawn image, I intentionally choose not to treat that as the final version. Instead, I redraw it with the plotter. This isn’t about using the plotter simply as a tool to reproduce something cleanly. Rather, it’s closer to the feeling of “drawing together”—as if engaging in a dialogue through the act of drawing. In that conversation, the lines that emerge can’t be claimed solely as mine, nor as those of the machine. Instead, they seem to arise from a space between us, from something uncertain and full of chance. And I think perhaps it’s that very “something” I’m trying to draw, as I continue this dialogue with the plotter.

Before the drawing begins, I share the core of the piece with the plotter. For works centered around sound, I let it listen to field recordings I’ve gathered—flowing water, city ambience, the sound of wind. For more emotional works, I might give it a written reflection, or show it photographs or moving images. In both cases, the plotter subtly shifts its drawing speed and rhythm in response to the mood or nuance contained in the sound or feeling. I receive those subtle changes and, through an interface, respond in real time—adjusting my own emotional inputs based on the plotter’s movement. This ongoing feedback creates a kind of resonance, a delicate back-and-forth that feels very much like a conversation.

The lines that emerge from this process carry a tension that could never come from human hands alone, nor from a machine operating in isolation. They occupy a space between perfection and imperfection—a balance of layered intention and subtle misalignment. These drawings remain open, with traces of imbalance or hesitation that invite the viewer’s presence. What may appear unfinished is, to me, closer to the thing I want to capture: a state of openness that allows connection.

All of my work is born from some form of dialogue. A conversation with the environment, with sound, with light, with myself. And the plotter is simply one more voice in that exchange. Each is equally vital—external elements that bring a piece into being not through control, but through relationship. My work isn’t meant to be sealed within the boundaries of human intention alone; it’s meant to remain open, formed through connection with something beyond me. That’s why I see the plotter not as a tool, but as a collaborator.

To draw with code and machines is not to replace sensitivity. Rather, it’s to encounter the edges of it more clearly. For me, drawing is always a dialogue, a form of response, and an ongoing encounter with something not yet known. And it’s that dialogue I want to keep quietly building, one line at a time.