Dmitry Morozov, the Moscow-based media artist behind the pyrite sun sound generator we featured last year, has just released video footage of his latest creation. The electropollock has been designed as an homage to American expressionist painter Jackson Pollock, famous for his energetic drip painting works. Morozov's electromechanical creation employs a similar method to get paint onto the rolling "canvas," but the end result is determined by music fed into the system.
The electropollock is built around an old printer mechanism that's been augmented with solenoid valves and electric motors. At the heart of the machine is an Arduino Uno electronics project board that runs a special algorithm. The algorithm registers peaks in sound frequency and amplitude and then translates them into brush stroke activity, the speed at which the paper moves through the machine and the rate that the paint is supplied to the system.
Paint or ink is fed into a drip nozzle attached to a moving "print head" and the music-influenced abstracts are the result of the actions of a paint brush that hangs from an arm that extends out above the paper and a special fan for sprayed patterns. A speaker rises from the back of the unit to output the music that's inspiring the seemingly random brush work.
You can see the machine getting into a Marilyn Manson groove in the video below.
Source: Dmitry Morozov