While browsing through the book ‘Colour’, I noticed a fascinating drawing in black ink on white paper that changes color right before your eyes.
If you stare at it for a while, red patterns emerge spontaneously, and even other chromatic colors can appear.
Arthur Hoener (1933-1987) referred to the collaborative effect of two colors as ‘synergistic’ color mixing. For example, enhancing green by placing it next to red.
If you are open to it and let go of your resistance mechanism, you can gaze at the drawing and experience the spectral effects yourself.
I think it’s fun to experiment with these theories a bit, which is why I’ve started recreating Hoener’s work ‘Duo‘ from 1980 as a starting point. Besides the funny frogspawn look of course. 👀
Using Python/VSketch code, the matrix is filled with circles of a certain fixed size, containing a filled circle inside. The size of this dot depends on the location. If the dot is within the defined ‘hot’ area, the enlargement process is activated.
To facilitate this, I created a playground where I can quickly adjust parameters and see results directly on-screen. This makes it easy to enable a fade in and out and to reverse it for example.
For now, I have placed a simple square in the center to recreate ‘Duo’, but I plan to expand it with other shapes for potentially even more interesting effects. Maybe beautiful work will come of it. Please keep an eye on the Plotshop if you are interested in purchasing such a piece.
Update: a serie with variations on Arthurs works is available in the Plotshop now.
Update: the replica of Arthurs work as an SVG file is also available as a download.
Material: Rotring ink on A3 Clairefontaine DCP 160gsm
Plotter: HP DraftMaster II
Plot length: 98m
Plot duration: 26 min
The iconic cover of Joy Division’s legendary debut album “Unknown Pleasures” (1979) features a striking image of a pulsar’s radio waves. I always liked Joy Division (and New Order) and thought it would be a fun project to recreate the Ridgeline plot on a period(-ish) correct pen plotter. In this post the approach will be outlined without getting too much into details.
We use a lot of paper in our plotting endeavours. Here’s an insight in one of the cool plotter products of the era.
We have welcomed another big pen plotter to the fleet. The notorious HP 7596A DraftMaster II. In this post I’ll cover the whole process from buying an in unknown working state vintage plotter, hauling it back home, to getting it ready for some serious production work.
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