Hepburn Wind Farm Project, 2018

Cameron Robbins has undertaken a residency at Hepburn Wind farm during October 2018. Over the duration of the project Robbins ran numerous site experiments, created a series of incredible drawings and light works and tested new ideas.

The Wind Drawing Machines are installed in different locations to receive weather energy and translate it into an abstract format of ink drawings on paper.

A physicist from the Bureau of Meteorology has described these wind drawings in mathematical language as ‘phase-space diagrams’.

The drawing machines are instruments. More like clarinets and pianos than compasses or setsquares, they must be maintained, practiced, and performed to produce work that communicates.

The machines respond to wind speed and wind direction, and allow rain and sun to also play on the drawings. The principle employed here is that the wind direction orients a swiveling drawing board connected to a wind vane, while the wind speed drives a pen on a wire arm around in a cyclical motion.

While it is a mechanical thing with axles, bearings, and pulley wheels, it also has inbuilt flexibility which allows it to respond to subtle and chaotic dynamics and to stray from any predetermined path.

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