The Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus

Julius von Bismarck (DE), Benjamin Maus (DE)

Winning Piece at the V Edition of the ARCOmadrid/BEEP Electronic Art Prize (2010)

Honorary Mention Interactive Art Installation, Ars Electronica (2009).

Customized plotter and computer. 150cm x 100 cm. Edition 1/3

A work of art capable of creating infinite works of art. That is how we may define The Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus, which tells a story in images through drawings extracted from the files of the US Patent Office.

The artefact finds drawings on the internet whose descriptions match keywords from an account provided by the artist, and prints them in real time under the gaze of the public.

The patent that best relates to the analyzed text is used as a seed and the drawings of more than seven million patents, many of them truly fascinating, are continuously reproduced on an extremely long sheet of paper as if by some exquisite third millennium cadaver. This sheet can then be cut in the desired measurement, turning the machine into a perpetual creator of unique works.

The Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus constitutes an important contribution to the theme of semantic connections and the translation of the word to images.

 

The Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus / Julius von Bismarck (DE), Benjamin Maus (DE), Credit: Magdalena Sick-Leitner