"Taitographs are drawings made by machines and have been recently exhibited in San Antonio and San Marcos Texas. They are the subject of articles in at least three magazines which are due to be published shortly. In the past they have been exhibited at the NEC Birmingham at the Focus on Imaging event and have also appeared in books which I have written.

Taitographs are different from computer images in that most are analogue not digital and the programming is by means of simple sequential switching units.

Amongst the images shown also are some drawn on a very ancient computer plotter which I used before some of my machines were developed. These are:- Tessel, Blue Wave, Tree, Stripe, Random Circle, and Gold Wave.

The rest are all made by my electro- mechanical machines which use pens to draw; some of these are modified to use a light unit which draws the image directly into a high end digital camera. When pen drawings are made, these are in the form of lines on paper and have to be scanned.

Colour is added in Adobe Photoshop. The computer and software simply take the place of printing machines which I used for my printmaking in the past.

In August 2006 I gave a paper to the Bridges conference and exhibited there. Bridges is a major international event, attracting scientists, artists and musicians from all over the world to discuss artworks from computers.

My background is in art education, where I am the only person ever to have begun two schools of photography, both of which were internationally acknowledged in the '60s and '70s. These were at Derby and Manchester respectively.

In addition to freelance practice in Singapore and London, I have written extensively for the photographic press and published three books.

In the '80s I took charge of the School of Graphic Design in Newport S. Wales and ran the only B. A. Honours Graphic Design course in Wales for almost ten years; my remit being to introduce new technology and to bring the course up to date.

In addition to design and photography I have made medium format architectural cameras in the past and the engineering skills developed then have been useful in designing and making the drawing machines.

The machines are made from a mixture of new materials and scrap parts modified to suit my requirments.

I have always been intrigued by the results from simple instructions given to a machine which can then produce complex images. My machine building has gone on for more than 40 years. They are built to high standards of precision and can be programmed, allowing some repeatability.

Recent pictures have achieved the characteristics of 'hard edge' abstract paintings/prints and many viewers assume that they are drawings done by hand. The fact that they are machine images raises interesting questions about the nature of art.

The work is broadly constructivist and obviously influenced by the Bauhaus movement and artists such as Kandinsky, Klee, Vassarely, Riley, Mondrian and Kenneth Martin.

I now live in Bronydd near Hay on Wye. I have a studio and engineering workshop where the machines are made and used. Further work may be seen on my website where pictures of the machines can be seen as well as the wide range of images.

All images can be printed to any size up to mural scale and the images shown here represent a small sample of what is believed to be a unique approach to printmaking.

I can be contacted by email at jack.tait@btconnect.com and I am available to give lectures on this topic."

Article written by Jack Tait