Macchine per disegnare

Can you draw by squeezing a sponge, blowing colourful bubbles, shaking strange
boxes, or playing with a hula-hoop? With the drawing machines described in this
book, yes you can: they are inexpensive objects, often made from recycled
materials, not designed to teach children how to draw but to allow them to
experiment, through play, with the freer dimension of drawing and self-expression.
With the machines, as curator Giorgio Camuffo points out, “children do not draw trees, houses, faces, animals, but rather intersecting lines, coloured spirals, open, unfinished abstract figures that leave them free to discover forms visible only with theeyes of their imagination”.

The “drawing machines” are based on the results of Come on Kids!, a project
devised by Giorgio Camuffo at the Libera Università di Bolzano (later merged into
the research project EDDES -Educare con/attraverso il design) and have so far beentested at the Libera Università di Bolzano, the Triennale di Milano, MART di
Rovereto and the Fondazione Querini Stampalia. This book tells the story of their conception and shows them in action, through on-site photographs and illustrations explaining how each project works, as well as reproducing the drawings created by the machines, including colour circles, marker strokes and soap bubbles.

The images are accompanied by in-depth essays by Maddalena Dalla Mura,
Emanuele Quinz, Raimonda Riccini, Alvise Mattozzi, Roberto Gigliotti, Kuno Prey
and Carlo Tamanini, who explore the relationship between drawing, design and machines from different points of view, which is particularly relevant at a time like the present when the relationship between design and childhood is back in focus.