Locus

2026 (ongoing)

Locus is a body of work where movement does the drawing.

Each work starts with footage Novak shoots on his phone. Clouds crossing the sky, a tree moving in the wind. That footage runs through an AI object-detection system he built. It watches the footage and marks every shape it detects with a box. Instead of clearing those marks, he keeps them. They gather over time until the movement has drawn a picture.

The collaboration is the point. The AI can’t draw and doesn’t know it’s making art. The clouds and trees don’t know either. No single hand is behind the result, yet a picture arrives. Each work takes its name from whatever did the drawing, numbered as the series grows.

Cloud Drawing 1 is drawn from moving clouds. The system finds shapes in the drift and leaves a mark for each. The movement is loose and slow, so the drawing stays open, with room between the lines.

Tree Drawing 4 is drawn from a tree in the wind. The marks come in four colours, one for each class, the categories an AI uses to sort what it sees. The movement is tighter here, and the lines knot up where the branches cross.