Anonymous Drawing Room is an interactive artwork that traces our physical interactions with computers as digital line drawings. The work was presented as a gallery installation, consisting of a computer programme running on a Silicon Graphics computer, inkjet printer and A4 printed drawings, accompanied by a web-based live digital drawing.

Year: 1997
Exhibitions: c3, Centre for Culture and Communication, Budapest, Hungary (1997)

Links:
http://www.c3.hu/~bhood/

Anonymous Drawing Room consisted of a onscreen digital line drawing, which tracked the mouse movements of the gallery audience browsing a digital artwork by artist Reinhard Adt, presented in an adjacent gallery space. The drawing appeared and evolved in real-time on screen, controlled by an automated drawing programme that captured and translated the live feed of the mouse movement data coordinates into onscreen lines. At 30 minute intervals, the drawing programme would capture a still image of the digital line drawing, which was automatically sent to print on an A4 inkjet, stamped with time and date. The digital onscreen drawing would then refresh, and restart. The resulting prints were exhibited in the gallery space. The digital drawing was also available to view remotely as a live web-based experience, through the c3 website.

The artwork highlighted the physical encounters we have with technology, the tangible interface of hand on mouse, at a time, in the early days of public use of the internet, when the emphasis was very much on the digital, disembodied experience. The drawings that were created were both automated and anonymous, extracted from their origin in physical movements of the individual and translated into programmed creative production.  

Funded by: Anonymous Drawing Room was developed during a two month EMARE residency (European Media Art Residency exchange) at c3, Centre for Culture and Communication, Budapest, Hungary in Autumn 1997, with additional funding from the British Council