Polar plottings

Sandy Noble uses a primitive robot and a plotting system designed for Arctic maps to sketch out beautiful prints.

Programmer, designer and maker Sandy Noble has created a drawing machine that creates pixilated images using a polar coordinate system.

The Polargraph creates images in long, arcing motions resulting in an interesting mix between robotic geometry, thanks to the polar coordinate system, and something completely organic.

The top two edges of the canvas Noble uses as “poles” with the “pixels” resulting from an overlapping pattern of arcs. It’s the angle of the lines that gives it that impression that it might be hand drawn, though closer up it is evident that it is machine made, without the angular monotony.

The Polargraph is programmed to execute a bitmapped image into the polar coordinates, which the robot part of the Polargraph then brings into realisation. The machine has been specifically set up so that one cannot know beforehand what the final drawing will look like.

For more, here’s the video.