SAM is a drawing machine inspired by the first plotters and the arrival of computer art in the 1960s. Initiated with one of my students from ésad d'Amiens as part of his apprenticeship, we conceived and built from scratch a machine and fondly named it SAM. You can read about the process in detail on the official web site we made specifically for the project. SAM was first presented to the public at the school in 2015 as part of La Nuit Blanche. It has since had the honor of travelling to Bordeaux as part of a workshop and installation at La Librairie Mollat and stole the show at La Fête du Code at the prestigious Centre Pompidou in March 2017.

Project type : Research/Art Installation
Tools used : Custom-made tools in Processing, Arduino
Web site : www.samdraws.bitbucket.io
Code Repository : Home Brew Dev

The first portrait drawn by SAM at La Nuit Blanche d'Amiens. 2014

Detailed plans for SAM's hand and a first prototype.

SAM took a few months to put together and we had lots of fun on the way. We learnt about mechanics, electronics, woodwork, stepper motors, linear motion systems and all that before scratching our heads on what SAM would draw. Whilst many recent plotter projects are happy to draw directly from vector based files, our ambition for SAM was to focus a little more on that 'how' of the drawing process. For this reason the project was an on-going affair in which we have tried to develop new tools and approaches for each workshop and installation.

Shows some first iterations for software and output. 2015

For our last project with the Centre Pompidou in Paris we managed to put together a really fun and successful installation that began to answer in part how SAM could draw. The initial concept was to imagine a collaborative art piece that reveals a little of the mystery behind code and programming for artistic purposes. A computer program is a set of precise instructions. To get kids to understand this basic concept, we developed a piece of software that generated join the dot diagrams from photos taken by participants. They then proceeded to draw their portraits whilst SAM proceeded to draw exactly the same image and from the same set of instructions - a list of dots to connect.

What ensued from that immensly fascinating creative process was a subtle mix of pedagogy for the kids and a critical view of the machine vs man for the adults. You can read more about the process behind this project on our official website for SAM.