I'm Targz

Pronounced however makes you happy

I’ve always been fascinated by technology. I had my first gaming console in the 80s, my first computer in the 90s, and since then I’ve been an early adopter of any new emerging technology including AR, VR, 3D printing, blockchain, AI.

Those nerdy passions, my taste for geometric shapes and my career in creative programming eventually led me to generative art and all sorts of exploration. Later on I discovered the pioneers of Op Art and pen plotting, such as Vera Molnar and Bridget Riley, and everything clicked.

Practice

At some point of my creative process, I discovered that I have some weird ability to see “things” in abstract shapes that apparently not everyone sees, a process likely akin to pareidolia. I call them artefacts.

Since then I tried to surprise myself, I never know if or when I’ll “see” an artefact, but I’m seeking it, and each time a new one appears it always brings me a huge emotion, like my brain was waiting to see it.

I’ve explored a lot of different generative algorithms in the process. I’ve been oscillating between very abstract things, artefacts that feel more like a concept or a feeling, to much more literal things like portraits.

Technique

To bring my vision to life I build my own generative tools (JavaScript, Processing) and I built a pen plotter made of a mix of off-the-shelf materials and a custom 3D printed plotting head.

The design of the plotter and the pieces it produces are deeply intertwined. The works generated by the algorithm are points in space, to transcribe my vision onto paper I go through pens or brushes, each with their own capabilities and constraints. That’s where I tweak my machine to handle those specificities and reach the final result.

This can range from tuning the machine, to designing pen holders specific to each technique, all the way down to the motion control software. This approach is a long process with many steps, each piece has potentially required months of adaptation, trial and error.

It’s something that is hard to document and explain. My generative tools, algorithms, machine tweaks, and gcode are the things people have a hard time seeing as an artistic process.

Showing the work

All of this has taken me to places I wouldn’t have expected, like Art Capital at the Grand Palais. Sharing the work is both deeply satisfying and absolutely terrifying, every single time. But what I love most is the discussions it generates, the critics, the encounters. My technique acts as a filter, it tends to push away people with a narrow view on art and bring in the most amazingly interesting ones.

My Training

I never formally studied any of this. No art school, no engineering degree, no programming courses. Everything I know comes from the community, open source tools, and open-minded people willing to share.

A huge shout out to the pen plotter community. Kind, helpful, deeply involved, endlessly creative, always sharing art and tips, and collectively incapable of not buying every single art supply that exists on earth. I love you guys.

A non-exhaustive list of tools and people that have made my work possible

• Bantam Tools — The best machine and community supporter
• Penplotart — an Instagram account aggregating the best of the pen plot art community
• Drawingbots — the go-to resource for everything pen plotter related
• Drawingbots Discord — where the community actually hangs out
• vpype — a powerful open source pipeline for processing and optimizing vector files before sending them to the plotter
• grbl — the open source CNC firmware that many DIY plotters run on