This art piece is not the canvas or the finished product. The art is the act of the participants receiving input and translating instructions to reality. 

For Input = Output, viewers were asked to read instructions and engage with the items put before them; a canvas, paint and paintbrushes. The instructions were to take the next number (from a list of randomly generated numbers), find the direction from a guide and paint a line in that direction.

In this process, the lines drawn started simple before becoming lines made of shapes, figures and familiar objects. Not before long the patterns became chaotic and the participants started to play with form. The process reverses the typical interaction that people will have with computers; instructing a computer (giving input) to receive a desired outcome (output). However, when the instructions are given to participants (via the randomly generated numbers) there is no use in having a desired outcome as translation becomes varied. The participants show the complexity of human interaction and the willingness to display more of themselves than what is requested of them.

The objective of this art piece was to question our influences or ‘input’. Are the ideas we have ours when they are based on a compilation of our influences, subconscious or not? Or are they ours simply because we made them? And how does originality occur with influences and other variations in thinking?