If the computer is your creative medium, particularly if you are creating still imagery on the screen, how do you display your work? Obviously one method is to make the computer and the internet your gallery. The reverse also works, you can display a computer screen, or projection in a gallery. I have done both and there are certainly great things you can do with those options. You can also print out the work on a commercial printer, an Epson or an Iris, or whatever you have at home. I have done that too, and again it certainly can produce great results, albeit at ones that can quickly get expensive. All these main options though share two characteristics key characteristics, the images are remarkably flat, and close to weightless.

I am interested in using computers as a composition tool for creating art that has something of the richness, weight and tangibility of a classical oil painting. Personally I want to "print" my imagery using enamel paint, but I believe there are as many creative possibilities for printing digital imagery as there are digital artists. In order to reach those possibilities though it is necessary to look for a whole way at getting images off a computer. Essentially the task involved is the creation of a custom "art printer" or at least a printing process of some sort. This site documents my process as I attempt to both build a "paint jet printer" and build the resources to make it easier for others to do so as well.

The key development in creating this painthead was the suggestion from Rob Seward that I try using syringes. I had briefly considered the idea but had rejected it without testing out of concern that the tips of the syringe would clog quickly with paint. But once the idea was revived it became clear that part of the magic of a syringe is that the vacuum action completely eliminates that problem. It also provides a remarkable drip control and an incredible amount of precision in application. I had found an answer to one of the core issues with the paint head. Of course this syringe based design requires manually changing colors, but I can live with that. Details on manually testing out the syringe approach are below.

The second massive challenge was to build a device that could control a syringe via a computer. The approach I took after some research was to use a lever attached to a stepper motor powered lead screw to press down on the syringe. Simple enough in principal but building it out required I learn how to do some basic machining. In this I am eternally grateful to Richard Miller who patiently both taught me the basics and taught me how to love working with metal. And I love working with metal now, it holds an attraction that neither wood nor plastic ever even began to evoke in me. I never thought aluminum would be my favorite material, but...

This painthead is a fully mechanically functioning prototype, with a working stepper motor attached. The electronics are not done yet, but if they somehow work this might become the final painthead. More likely some retooling or reconstruction are in store at a later stage.

The results were pretty much what I hoped for. The syringe gives enough control over the drop size that it can retain the basic gridded images, yet loses enough control to mix, blend and splatter in ways that pixels can not dream of doing. I can't wait to hand the task of actually applying the pixel drops off to a machine...

The bubbles in the gray paint by the way are a result of a common syringe issue, with a little experience we learned that you need to knock the syringe a few times to get the bubbles out inside, which prevents them from coming out in the paint as well.

Once I had come to the syringe idea, it was clear it would need real testing. First I experimented with various drug store droppers and syringes, and got a rough idea of what was needed. Next up was a scouring of science surplus catalogs until I found a few different syringes in bulk. I did additional tests with these to determine which appeared to be the best, in terms of size, precision, resulting drop size and drip resistance. I settled on one generic and rather inexpensive model, and worked on devising a test that would give a sense of what a working printer powering the syringe might produce.

What I ended up with was a program that generated numbered grids for each color. Black squares indicated what parts of the grid were to recieve each color. Then on painter's paper I drew a grid and then carefully applied the appropriate color to each grid square. Easier said than done, it was a long process and rather painful on the arm. Worth every minute though!

The interface is linear, one image leads to the next, as simple as possible.
The last image was a birthday gift to my brother.

Starting at that point though is probably misleading as the last 6 months were far more abstract, and with less text than the previous year and a half.
All images were released to the public domain. That is also a good place to start looking at the middle period.

Later I made a couple attempts to revive the project, but never was able to return to the daily practice of production. There are some nice images from those attempts though.

The core of the original run of Wind is the enemy was a human algorithm design to fascilate the creation of an image a day.
1- all images where the same size 1024x768
2- all were .gifs
3- all used the same font (Warehouse) and font size (61)
4- a maximum of 20 minutes was allowed to produce each image

The project started in July 2001. It was originally concieved as a design project. The world of web design was then in a "pixel perfect" stage and often devoid of real content and political thought. The goal with Wind is the enemy was to produce raw, strong and intense imagery, with a focus on meaning not perfection. 9/11 changed a lot of this, and the project evolved many times from there.