The Wind Drawing Machines are installed in different locations to receive weather energy and translate it into an abstract format of ink drawings on paper.
A physicist from the Bureau of Meteorology has described these wind drawings in mathematical language as ‘phase-space diagrams’.
The drawing machines are instruments. More like clarinets and pianos than compasses or setsquares, they must be maintained, practiced, and performed to produce work that communicates.
The machines respond to wind speed and wind direction, and allow rain and sun to also play on the drawings. The principle employed here is that the wind direction orients a swiveling drawing board connected to a wind vane, while the wind speed drives a pen on a wire arm around in a cyclical motion.
While it is a mechanical thing with axles, bearings, and pulley wheels, it also has inbuilt flexibility which allows it to respond to subtle and chaotic dynamics and to stray from any predetermined path.
March 21 Equinox
Mount Maurice, S.A.
On site at Queenscliff Jetty, southern Australia, winter solstice 2008 (with Comet)
Sorrento Vic.
Design by
