Simon Biggs

Autography is an interactive software work that automatically generates evolving 3D characters resembling human handwriting. Its aim is a form of automatic writing produced by a machine rather than a person. Automatic writing is usually understood as a form of unconscious expression, in which someone in a trance-like state writes without conscious control, producing marks that often look more like scribble than text. Its value rests on the belief that we possess an unconscious that such writing can reveal. The technique was popular among early 20th-century followers of theosophy and early psychology, and the Surrealist André Masson used it to create semi-abstract works. Later, Henri Michaux and Cy Twombly developed it into sophisticated paintings and ‘writings’ that questioned both the authenticity of the artist’s mark and the meaning of writing itself, and Jackson Pollock’s late paintings can be read in the same light. Biggs places his work within this lineage, but here the hand belongs to no one, leaving open the question of whose unconscious, if any, these marks reveal.