As a medium for artistic expression entering its full force in 2016, drone technology is definitely up there with virtual and augmented reality. Earlier this month the first New York City Drone Festival featured the best in aerial cinematography and in February, the famous cyber-illusionist, Marco Tempest, released a video in which he choreographed a routine using autonomous quadcopters. Drones are making their way into the mainstream art and the new project from the MIT’s Fluid Interfaces Group can make this transition even quicker.
Created by Sang-won Leigh and Harshit Agrawal, Flying Pantograph adds a modern twist to the pantograph, created in 1603. The original device was used to duplicate or scale a drawing on a different piece of paper by linking two writing devices together. Flying Pantograph takes this concept and gives it a tech lift. Equipped with a pen and a piece of paper, the user draws on a flat surface, while the drone translates the movements onto the wall. The spatio-temporal possibilities are endless, from scaling and mirroring, to time stretching and recording and playing back the drone’s movement, creating countless duplicates. By using motion-tracking and Wi-Fi connection, Leigh and Agrawal are also able to control the drone from any distance.
The drone does more than just copy artist’s pen strokes, however. Thanks to software intelligence and motion dynamics, Flying Pantograph becomes an independent agent in the creative process. It interacts with artist’s vision by altering the original image, forming a whole new visual language of artistic expression and exploring machine aesthetics as a medium with its own right.
Leigh and Agrawal see a great potential in the technology they developed and do not want to limit themselves to street art alone. From enabling artists to collaborate together in real time without having to be in the same room, to adding artistic filters that would allow the drone to imitate famous artist’s strokes, the applications are only limited by the artist’s imagination. But the duo thinks even broader. For example, by allowing users to control the drone through eye-tracking sensors, patients suffering from paralysis could use their eyes to write messages on whiteboards. Leigh’s and Agrawal’s vision proves that soon enough we may not only see drones carrying Amazon’s packages, but also during art fairs and in hospitals among others.
Image source: Sang-won Leigh
This article was written by Weronika Jurkiewicz from PSFK and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.
