Cory Arcangel


 

On my desk to the right of me is a Hewlett-Packard 7475A pen plotter. Plotting technology immediately preceded ink-jet technology. A pen plotter is exactly the same as an ink-jet printer, except that instead of an ink cartridge, it has a little mechanical arm holding a pen. In the '70s and '80s people used these to print documents. Anyway, I bought this one off of eBay for a few dollars. Twenty years ago, it would have run me a few thousand dollars. After a few months of ordering parts on the internet and looking through obscure technical manuals, I finally got it to work. At this point I can only get it to draw sixty lines before it crashes. I'm trying to decide right now if I should just go with it and make a series of drawings using only sixty lines.