60-728 Advanced ETB: Drawing with Machines

9–24 units, Carnegie Mellon University

This is an intermediate/advanced studio course in experimental drawing, generative art, computational design, and mechatronic mishegoss. Working at the boundaries of creative code, automation, physical materials, and gestural mark-making, we will explore personal and peculiar new approaches to digital imaging; the development of ultra-niche workflows as a mode of creative practice; and the use of algorithms and machine collaborators as nontraditional intermediaries between mind, hand, and paper. Drawings will be created using AxiDraw/Bantam plotters and a variety of other specialized machinery. Interested students should have JavaScript and/or Python programming experience equivalent to an introductory course such as 15-104, 15-110 or 15-112. Units in this course include: rule-based art and conditional design; computational and generative form; synthetic automatism, chance and stochastic composition; and real-time interaction and contingency. Through rigorous exercises in freestyle computing, participants will develop skills in the control of robotic drawing machines to govern line, texture, tone, shape and mass in a variety of wet and dry drawing media.

Prerequisites: none listed

Offered: Fall 2025

Courseweave needs JavaScript to show sections, workloads and planning tools.