I'm enthralled with using pen plotters to make generative art. Last August at SIGGRAPH, I built an interactive experience for others to see how code can be used to make visual art. The linked blog post is my trials and tribulations of linking a MIDI controller to one of these algorithms and sending its output to a plotter, so that people may witness the end-to-end experience.
This is a really nice pair of a physical plus digital interface. I like that the button actions are clear in the 'composition' mode but the faders and knobs are not - makes it a bit more playful as you need to watch as you adjust values to understand what's changing purely from an output perspective rather than thinking in terms of parameters.<p>Novation Circuit (at least the OG) did this with synth parameters with similar effect - you need to listen to hear the effect, as each patch you could be changing a different parameter (for better or worse).<p>Nice writeup and great-looking project, I wish I could play with it in real life!
You lucked out being able to get the plotters. <a href="https://www.evilmadscientist.com/2024/bantam-tools/" rel="nofollow">https://www.evilmadscientist.com/2024/bantam-tools/</a> Evil Mad Scientist has been acquired by bantam-tools so plotters are out of stock for awhile, along with some of the cool additions they made.
I love it. I've been thinking of generative art in the physical world somewhat along these lines for a while now but haven't actually gotten around to the "physical world" part of these dreams yet. Mostly just been having fun coming up with interesting generative stuff in Processing. Your system seems really well designed, and that UI is pretty great. I'm jealous both of the well-designed system you made, and that you can use it to make things (I have many bare walls I intend to one day fill with generative art I've made).
What a fun project it must have been, for the maker and the audience.<p>This part made me sad though:<p>> I spent $99 on an Apple Developer account only to sideload my application on two iPads. It was a decent compromise.<p>There really ought to be some consumer rights about running your own software on your own devices.
very nice work and documentation. i did a little "plotter photo booth" with a homemade pen plotter many years ago and it was a ton of fun. folks love to see things moving off-screen!