It’s a situation familiar to anyone who works—or has worked—in an office. You send something to the printer, it doesn’t print, you get annoyed and start attacking the printer in the hope that vigorously shaking it will solve the malfunction, or at least alleviate some of your frustration. But were you aware that this anger-fuelled act is also a technique to produce art? Well, it is now.Joe Winter‘s project Printershake used this method to produce the images above. Using a typical desktop inkjet printer, he prints computer-generated images featuring grids, parallel lines, and concentric circles—the machine is then taken to task and the images are transformed into distorted, abstract pictures, what Winter likens to “scientific data (EKG, seismography, spectrometry)”. Looking at the making-of photos (last slide above), you’ll notice that it looks like a fairly violent—and fun—way to create art. More akin to the activities of a mosh pit rather than the meditative environment you might typically associate with creativity. Best of all, the minimalist results in no way bely the frantic way in which they were created.[via Triangulation Blog]
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Want To Make Art? Just Shake Your Printer
Joe Winter creates abstract images by violently shaking his desktop printer.