Developing out of my longstanding interest in physics and mathematics, I explore the interaction between the creative mind and robotic activity. To achieve this goal, I work in diverse media: drawing, painting, sculpture, video, installation, and interactive performances. I have invented numerous mark-making devices including sets of black and/or color pencils, pastels or brushes clamped together in a straight line, parallel and equally spaced, in a series of two to five hundred pieces. Since the implementation of this technique I used over 300,000 pencils, followed by poured paint and lasers, adding to the variety of mark-making on paper, canvas or metal placed directly on the ground. Not only the artist's hand, but my entire body is involved in a precisely choreographed dance movement.

The first concern of my work is the conceptual analysis of drawing as a process of inscribing bodily actions onto paper to communicate an idea or to fulfill an artistic intent. Beginning in 1974, through the agony of trying to find a new way of expressing myself, I intuitively picked up a fistful of pencils and started drawing. From that point on my artistic activity changed as a result of discovering a new way of drawing and realizing the inherent role devices play in the process. Through this collaboration between the human and the machine, I began to create large-scale multiple-line abstract drawings that resemble wave-like patterns, futuristic musical scores, or enormous computer chips. The drawings embody a strong three-dimensional feeling.

My work aims to provide a context for dialogue between the artist and the viewer through technology, a context which I believe to be specific to the 21" century. What started as groups of fifteen pencils controlled by my hand is at present time nine hundred pencils manipulated by a combination of computer and robotic technologies. This process has allowed me to create both outside the boundaries of my physical being and outside the traditional boundaries between myself as an artist and the viewer, who I hope to immerse in the process as well. Through the interaction between the artist and viewers we create a new kind of work as equal participants in a "visual democracy" that is supported by the emerging technologies of today.

It is worth noting that as our technologies continue to develop I will continue to include them in my process, especially now that we are on the cusp of exciting advances that thirty years ago seemed possible only in the world science fiction. Very recently scientists have been able to implant computer chips directly to the brain to record thoughts and ideas. It's my great ambition to be included in this research as an artist which, in my view, is the natural extension to my work thus far.

Dragan IIic