Drawing Machine

Ben Hopson was approached by director Nando Costa to develop a kinetic sculpture for use in a music video he was producing for the band Modest Mouse. Created for the song Whale Song, the video portrays an abstract journey into the mind of a young man played by Modest Mouse frontman, Isaac Brock.

The sculpture is a kind of mechanical drawing machine that is strapped to the forearm and produces strange curvilinear scrawls through an opaque system of twisting mechanics and spooling thread. The kinetic piece is used in the early scenes of the video to establish the theme of thread that literally and figuratively winds through the narrative. All images courtesy of Bent Image Lab.