Plotter Accuracy
After Open Studios, I went back to the plotter experiment and started working on improving its accuracy. One of the first things I noticed was that the direction of movement between the screen and the plotter felt reversed in some areas, so I adjusted the code to mirror the keypoints horizontally. This way, when I moved my hand to the left, the plotter would also move left, making the interaction feel a lot more natural and intuitive. I also realized that the motors were struggling when they received too many updates too quickly, which made the machine stutter or behave unpredictably. To fix this, I added a small delay between sending keypoints through the serial connection, giving the plotter time to process each movement before receiving the next one.
Along with the delay, I also introduced a movement threshold—basically, I set a rule that a new coordinate would only be sent if the hand had moved a significant amount from the previous position. This helped eliminate all the tiny, jittery movements that happen naturally when your hand is "still" but not perfectly frozen. By combining the mirroring, the delay, and the movement threshold, the plotter became much smoother and more controlled. It started to feel less like a chaotic sketching machine and more like a real extension of my hand movements, which opened up even more ideas for how it could be used in future installations.
Alphabet plots
Now that the plotter was moving much more smoothly and accurately, I decided to push the experiment a little further. I started thinking about how I could use the plotter not just for random gestures, but for something more deliberate—something that captured the idea of human-machine collaboration that had been running through my project all along. I decided to create a gesture-drawn typeface. Using the plotter and the improved hand tracking system, I attempted to "draw" all 26 letters of the alphabet on paper by moving my hand in the air and letting the machine translate those movements into physical lines. Each letter ended up looking imperfect, shaky, and slightly abstract, but that was the point—it wasn’t about precision, it was about capturing a real-time negotiation between human intention and machine interpretation.
After finishing all the letters, I decided to compile them into a small publication. I named the typeface Gestura, as a nod to the modernist typeface Futura, but grounded in gesture rather than geometry. The publication became a quiet extension of the project—something physical and reflective, balancing the more playful and interactive parts of the exhibition. Flipping through the printed pages felt different from watching the plotter move: it preserved the imperfections, the pauses, and the small hesitations of the hand that you couldn't see in real time. It wasn’t just a typeface; it felt like a portrait of the process itself.
