Lee Arnold finds this nugget (and others) at the SIGGRAPH conference [via the vertexList blog]:
Matt Shlian was at the conference as an artist in residence. He gave a fascinating talk about his intended misuse of technology to create paper sculptures and drawings. The work above was created with a digital plotter printer in which Shlian replaced the original drawing implements with Sharpie, ballpoint pen, and pencil.
Looks good. Would like to know more about the imagery, though. Is appropriated/scanned? Drawn by the artist on the computer? Based on a generative algorithm? The "misuse" of the printing tool is great, but one wonders if that same philosophy of misuse extends to the creation of the imagery somehow. Are the various low-tech writing implements causing the drawing to fail in some way (i.e., be imperfect or incomplete)? These look like contour drawings of architecture made with eyes closed--are they? The "timbres" are nice, balancing the machine- and handmade, but it would also be nice to know that it's not just an illustrational "look" that a web startup could use to make its style more "grunge." Is it possible to make bad (non-tasty) drawings with this method?