I returned to Bucklands Beach, where the Tamaki Estuary meets the sea, to create more wave tracings, but this time with the free-wheeling drawing tool I made in the 3D labs. The idea of the drawing tool was to let the pen roam freely over the page, guided only by the movements of the waves so that the work exists purely as a product of it environment. However the sea-state was too calm for the drawing tool to roll enough to make marks unaided, so I had to hold the pen similarly to the first wave tracing I did.
I decided to make a series of drawings this time, creating nine tracings of the waves on the shoreline over three minute increments. The resulting collection of drawings reads almost like a calendar, telling the temporal story of the conditions of the environment in which they were created; the direction the wind and tide was pulling, the sea state, boat wakes etc. The small, dense clusters of lines occur when the sea state is calmer with gentle waves, while the longer crazed-looking lines were the results of big gusts of wind and larger boat wakes from marine traffic on the river.
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