The automated drawings are a series of works that were born out of being in the studio. The title of the series could be interpreted as a nod to the "automatic drawings" made by the surrealists.
Often when I’m creating serial works, I make different series at the same time. For example, when I was working on ‘Death Imitates Language’ I was making drawings, too. In the case of these, they came about when I would have certain small ideas, formal explorations, I suppose it would be best to call them. I would get started on them, and just seeing them on the screen or printed by a laser printer seemed to leave them a little flat and lifeless to me, not dynamic enough. I wanted to make them a bit more ‘live’, and, so, ironically, I introduced a machinic dimension.
I would set up a plotter that would begin drawing with a ballpoint pen, and then I would interfere in the drawing process. Sometimes I would pull out the pen or change the pen in the plotter as it was moving. It resulted in some very interesting effects. I particularly liked cases when, for instance, there would be horizontal line, and then a vertical line, and the movement of the plotter would displace the ink that hadn’t dried in the previous line. This created pleasant, unexpected painterly qualities. In a way, these are quite classical works, concerned with form and the temporal dimension - they take a lot of time to create which allows me to get bored and experiment with the process. They are something like classical cyborg art works.
