The show came to an end and we disassembled the machine to leave just the drawing on the wall:



Sorry about the crappy picture.

The machine held its own for a little while but there were so many people jamming on it that it couldn't hold up.





Kevin had to take a wheel off to do some emergency welding after some kid went Lance Armstrong on one of the bikes. Then he and John and Hardy got it up and running again until this happened:



At which point they were free to just hang out and not worry about anything. Every gallery opening needs a little drama to make it fun!

We worked through the holiday weekend tweaking our drawing machine for the A+D opening party this Thursday.

The easiest way to describe the installation is a large two person, bicycle powered, etch-a-sketch. One bike controls the left/right movement and the other controls up/down. So when you pedal forward the pen fixture goes up and when you pedal backwards the fixture moves down, same for the left/right movement. There are four pens which are controlled by the brake levers on the bike. So pulling the left brake lever activates the orange pen and the right lever the blue pen and so on.

So, for example, to draw an "I", only the up/down bicycle has to participate. Starting at the bottom, pull a brake lever to start the pen, then pedal forward to move the pen up. However to draw an "O", it gets a little more interesting because both bikes need to participate. Starting at the bottom of the "O", drawing in a counterclockwise movement then one bike needs to be pedaling forward to move the pen up while the other is pedaling backwards to moving the pen right. Then after one quadrant the second bike needs to change to pedaling backwards to move the pen left, then at the top, the other bike needs to reverse their pedaling to move the pen down while still going to the left, and so on until the circle is complete.

It sounds somewhat complicated but is actually very fun trying to coordinate your own pedaling with the movement of the pens and the person on the other bike.
Anyways, the party is this Thursday, there is a lot of great art, and it should be a blast. Hope to see you there!
Click the link for more info: A+D Museum



Installation in progress: