Research

I was born in a transitional period, just as the internet and computers arrived, and I have always been fascinated by how technology puzzles people, how it became the new magic of this era. Many of my sculptures are made with machines, and often I build the machines myself. In making them I found a close connection to them. There is nothing wrong with technology in itself. It is the offspring of a part of our humanity.

Open-source pen plotter

Large format, 4 × 8 ft
DIY CNC, open source
Used for American Diaries and the ongoing Digital Teleportation series

This project looks at where open-source ethos and artistic labor meet. It came out of research into low-cost industrial materials: a large-format pen plotter that translates digital data into physical paintings. At first it was a critique of the art market's focus on outcome, and of the unseen labor of the artist's assistant. Then it moved toward collaboration across borders. With protocols that let identical machines be built in different countries, it forms a digital tunnel that bridges physical distance. I taught my brother to build one in Iran. The ongoing Digital Teleportation series uses the same process: paintings sent as data and redrawn by identical machines in different countries.

The plotter in my studio, Syracuse

Drawing a halftone with a common pen

The plotter at O Gallery, Tehran

Halftone to G-code

Rhino, Grasshopper
CMYK split, raster to vector

The workflow uses Rhino Grasshopper to split an image into CMYK channels and turn raster data into vector curves and G-code. The plotter then draws the halftone with ordinary pens. I keep the materials to things you can buy anywhere, paper and pens, so the process works like a material game of telephone. A letter can pass where an artwork cannot.

Grasshopper definition: image, halftone, curves, G-code

Your Hand Is My Hand

2024–2025
7 works
3D prints, cherry wood, lenticular photographs, food, video
Shown in Doppelgänger, Outlook Is ___ Projects, Los Angeles, 2024
Part of the MFA thesis Love Against the Machine

My mother lives in Iran and I live in the US. My identical twin brother became my proxy. He scanned her hand there and I printed it here. Photogrammetry promised to collapse the distance between the two countries with godlike accuracy, but the G-code of a 3D printer cannot recreate essence, and this game of marionette fails. These works are what that failure left behind, and how I learned to remember her without trying to teleport her.

Installation view, Doppelgänger, Outlook Is ___ Projects, Los Angeles, 2024

Rockin' Alone2025

Jamal2025

Going Home 22025

Your Hand Is My Hand2024

“Look At Your Hand, Looks Like Dad’s”2024

Going Home2024

Going Home (video)2024

Photogrammetry and 3D printing

3D scanning, PLA and PETG prints
Used for Your Hand Is My Hand

I taught myself how to build a 3D printer to teleport my mother's hand. My twin brother scanned her hand in Iran and I printed it in the US. Photogrammetry has a godlike dimensional accuracy, but the G-code of a 3D printer cannot recreate essence. The prints became a record of that failure, and building the printer also helped me think about how I teach making.

Your Hand Is My Hand, 2024

“Look At Your Hand, Looks Like Dad’s”, 2024

“Look At Your Hand, Looks Like Dad’s”, 2024

Image to come

Cherry wood and light

CNC-milled cherry wood, video mapping
Used for Rockin' Alone

Cherry wood darkens in light. I use that photosensitivity to make objects that change and react to their environment. When a hand is held against the wood, it leaves a silhouette, and over time that trace fades. With this material I wanted to move away from the failure of technology and toward reaction.

Rockin' Alone, 2025

Detail, the carved hand

Image to come

Z-depth maps

Depth maps, 3D reconstruction
Drawing and making from depth

A Z-depth map is a grayscale image where brightness stands for distance instead of color. Current research can rebuild a 3D model from a single photograph through a map like this. I use depth maps as part of the process: to rebuild form from images, and to draw and make things from that depth. Images and more text coming soon.

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Love Against the Machine

MFA thesis
Syracuse University, 2025
Read the thesis

The ties that bind existence to meaning offer powerful forms through which we can examine the nature of Being. I examine technology through opposing concepts of death, time, and space. My work is a mirror reflecting how the technology of this century has evolved into an individualistic desire machine. While confronting these forces, it ultimately finds salvation through the exercise of inner freedom. Here, art becomes a form of resistance and reclamation, the last stand for humanity against commodifying systems.

Studio notes

Material tests, sketches, code

More images from the studio coming soon.

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Jalal Ghias Beygi