Art is very personal and we often consider the process of creation itself when evaluating the resulting piece. Does a sculpture have more artistic value when molded by human hands rather than a 3D printer? Most would say that it does. But what if the automation was, itself, part of the art? Yuichiro Katsumoto explored that idea with the “Renment (alpha)” chain art machine.

This is a bit like a large pen plotter, except that it “draws” with chains instead of ink. As the machine’s toolhead moves around the table following the paths of characters, a spool slowly drops steel chain into the form of those characters. After the machine finishes spelling out a word or phrase, it reels the chain back in and the process repeats. 

In the published video demonstration, it writes out the phrase “we forge the chains we wear in life” coined by Charles Dickens.  

The machine has three axes: the linear X and Y axes typical of a pen plotter, plus an additional rotary axis for the 3D-printed chain spool. Katsumoto based the design on DIY Machines Ltd’s coffee table kinetic sand art machine. An Arduino UNO Rev3 board controls the machine’s stepper motors through an Arduino CNC Shield V3.51, which is compatible with Grbl and can accept any g-code of that flavor. 

Katsumoto created “Renment” with support from JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP20K12125 and displayed the piece at SIGGRAPH Art Galley ’24.