Drawing is human: what happens when we attempt to draw remotely and independently from the body?

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The exhibition Scripts – a chronicle of incidents, directed by Edouard Cabay and hosted at La Casa Elizalde in Barcelona, displays an extensive series of drawings produced without the hand, emerged by the relentless gesture of a mechanical device, alimented by an external source of information.

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The exhibition presents the work of Machinic Protocols, an investigation line within the Master of Advanced Architecture of the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, held in fall 2016. Structured in three different sections, it features automated plotting machines, data-driven cartographical drawings and performing architectural models.

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The drawings displayed are mechanically created, yet featuring irregularities: no two drawings are the same, the strokes are unique and their form is anything but homogenous. “Calligraphic qualities emerge from the machinic gesture, bizarrely resembling the movement of the hand of the artist.” says Edouard Cabay, curator of the exhibition and director of the project.

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The exhibition raises the questions of the replicability of an artistic artefact and of the role of chance in creative experimentations. The moment in which the machine seems to lose the traditional precision that normally characterizes it is when the most powerful results are produced.