Usnea is made of six layers of ballpoint pens (brown and black) with different weights attached, created using a drawing robot and generative software. There are over a million lines in this drawing, totalling around 5 miles of ink, and it took three days for the robot to draw. The drawing is based on a flatbed scanner image of a sample of beard lichen found in western Scotland.
Simon Kirby is a scientist, musician, and artist interested in the relationship between human and machine culture. In this drawing he explores the uncanny effect of using one of the most humble and familiar writing implements in the world - the ballpoint pen - to create a drawing with so much density of ink. The juxtaposition of the familiar ink and the image of the lichen created directly from a flatbed scanner leaves a sense of ambiguity. Is this a drawing or a photograph, or something else entirely?