(Very vaguely related: Robotism, or: The Golden Arm of Architecture). The real value of these robots is that, like the human arm, their usefulness is completely determined by the tool that is placed in its hand.»
So why only give robots tools like «welding torches, vacuum grippers, and saws,» he asks—why not give them pencils or brushes? The script, or set of rules, as well as the ability or inability of the robot to follow these instructions is the focus of the work. With these, though, Kudless throws in some Agnes Martin for good measure, revealing the robot arms’ facility for minimalist lines and grids in a graceful set of two-dimensional drawings. Kudless explains that «each of the works produced in this series was entirely programmed and drawn through software and hardware»: None of the lines or curves was manually drawn either within the computer or in physical reality. Precisely imprecise.»[Image: «Untitled #16,» from «Scripted Movement Drawing Series 1» (2014) by Andrew Kudless]. The speed, acceleration, brush type, ink viscosity, and many other variables needed to be considered in the writing of the code.Various drawing styles were chosen to showcase this.[Image: «Untitled #15 (Twenty Seven Nodes with Arcs Emerging from Each),» from «Scripted Movement Drawing Series 1» (2014) by Andrew Kudless]. [Image: «Untitled #3 (Extended Lines Drawn from 300 Points on an Ovoid to 3 Closest Neigh[bor]ing Points at 100mm/s)» (2014) from «Scripted Movement Drawing Series 1» (2014) by Andrew Kudless].[Image: «Untitled #12,» from «Scripted Movement Drawing Series 1» (2014) by Andrew Kudless]. [Image: «Untitled #6 (1066 Circles each Drawn at Different Pressures at 50mm/s),» from «Scripted Movement Drawing Series 1» (2014) by Andrew Kudless]. The results are remarkable, but it’s specifically the unexpected combination of Lewittian instructional art with industrial robotics that I find so incredibly interesting. Made up of a series of joints that mimic yet extend the movements of shoulder, elbow, and wrist, the robot has a wide range of highly control[led] motion. It’s as if, he suggests, every object fabricated—every car body assembled—has always and already been a kind of instructional readymade, or Sol Lewitt meets Marcel Duchamp on the factory floor. Rather, I created a series of different scripts or programs in the computer that would generate not only the work shown here, but an infinite number of variations on a theme. [Image: «Untitled #13,» from «Scripted Movement Drawing Series 1» (2014) by Andrew Kudless]. [Image: «Untitled #14,» from «Scripted Movement Drawing Series 1» (2014) by Andrew Kudless]. After all, Kudless ingeniously implies, it has always been the case that literally all acts of industrial assembly and production are, in a sense, Sol Lewitt-like activities—that conceptual art processes are hiding in plain sight all around us, overlooked for their apparent mundanity. [Image: «Untitled #7 (1066 Lines Drawn between Random Points in a Grid),» from «Scripted Movement Drawing Series 1» (2014) by Andrew Kudless]. San Francisco-based designer and architect Andrew Kudless is always up to something interesting, and one of his most recent projects is no exception.
