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Fascinating Drawing Machine Illustrates Never-ending Story

Oct 21, 2009 02:30 PM

The Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus is a project developed by Julius von Bismarck and Benjamin Maus. The drawing device illustrates a never-ending story through the use of 7 million patent drawings (linked by over 22 million references). Scroll past the instructions to go straight to the video demonstration.

The basic procedure occurs as followed (from the P.S.A. site):

1. The program downloads and parses a part of the text of a recent best-selling book.

2. The algorithm eliminates all insignificant words like "I", "and", "to", "for", "the", etc. The remaining words and their combinations are the keywords for the patent drawings.

3. Using the keywords in chronological order, it searches for the key-patents.

4. The program now searches for a path connecting the found key patents. This is possible because every patent contains several references to older patents - the so-called "prior art".

5. All key-patents and the patents connecting them semantically are arranged and printed.

6. Go to step 1.

Infographic detailing the progression of a product timeline from initial concept to execution.

Scroll of blank paper mounted on a wall.

Drawing machine moving along a vertical surface.

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