I built an interactive plotter art exhibit for SIGGRAPH
I'm enthralled with using pen plotters to make generative art. Last August at SIGGRAPH, I built an interactive experience for others to see how code can be used to make visual art. The linked blog post is my trials and tribulations of linking a MIDI controller to one of these algorithms and sending its output to a plotter, so that people may witness the end-to-end experience.
I built an interactive plotter art exhibit for SIGGRAPH launched on March 27, 2024 with 167 votes, #309 of 4,270 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 2 years on.
In plain words
This project demonstrates an interactive art installation that connects generative algorithms to physical pen plotters. Visitors use a MIDI controller to influence code-based visual designs, which are then plotted in real-time on paper. Designed for artists and technologists interested in the intersection of code and visual art, the installation showcases the complete workflow from digital algorithm to physical artwork, making generative art processes tangible and participatory.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
Building an interactive art installation requires careful planning and application architecture. In this post, I will explain my decisions and how I arrived at them.
I was given the opportunity to participate in SIGGRAPH 2023 in Los Angeles, and I decided to showcase how art, code, and pen plotters all mesh together. In order to do this, I created an interactive art installation which brought together all three. Building an interactive art installation requires careful planning and application architecture. In this post, I will explain my decisions and how I arrived at them. My design goal was simple: A person can walk up, play with a MIDI controller, see a resulting image on a screen, and then send the image to a pen plotter. The plotter draws their unique drawing, and they can take it home and frame it. I began concepting some simple generative…from lostpixels.io
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