String Art - from the Hand of a Robot

String art is a technique for the creation of visual artwork where images emerge from a set of strings that are spanned between pins. Now, at TU Wien (Vienna) this work can be delegated to a robot - an example of a complex task that digital fabrication can solve. The basic idea of string art is simple: hooks distributed on a frame are connected by strings back and forth until they fuse to a perceptible image. That way, very interesting geometric patterns can be created - indeed, true experts even manage to create portraits. Traditionally, artists craft such images manually in a highly sophisticated and tedious design process which requires experience and a steady hand. At TU Wien (Vienna), this kind of creation of artistic images has now been automated: the computer calculates the optimal thread path from an arbitrary given image and an industrial robot then takes over the job of arranging the thread. Countless possibilities - "From a scientific point of view, this is a very interesting problem because it is particularly difficult to solve," says Przemyslaw Musialski from the Institute for Discrete Mathematics and Geometry at TU Wien.