This Spirograph Draws Pictures That Are Bigger Than Your Tiny, Cramped Apartment

I’m no artist. I couldn’t draw a stick figure to save my life. But even I would be able to make a kick-ass sketch using this insanely cool, 9-feet tall, room-sized Spirograph by artist Eske Rex. (It takes up 380-square-freaking-feet.)

As you can see from above, two stands are orientated at 90 degrees to one another over a giant canvas. Two arms extend from either stand, and where they meet is the real Van Gogh in this equation—a ballpoint pen. Weights as heavy as 165 pounds are suspended from either stand to keep the momentum going. Whoever’s the “artist” swings one of the pendulums—or if he’s feeling crazy, both—and gets to sit back and relax while the physics-driven Drawingmachine does all the hard work. When it’s done, you’ll have a 9 by 9 feet image of ovals, circles, ellipses—basically anything but a square.

Rex has a background in carpentry, which explains quite a bit as to how he constructed such an interesting piece. Oddly enough, he’d never heard of a Spirograph before inventing the Drawingmachine; rather, he was inspired by the harmonograph. [Eske Rex via Drawingmachine, The Atlantic]

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