He’s never heard of Spirograph, but Swedish artist Eske Rex has created a huge drawing machine that creates similar results.

With nothing but a couple of pendulums, a seemingly simple wooden construction, and a range of colored ballpoint pens, Rex’s Drawingmachine creates larger-than-life graphic images that, like snowflakes, are each unique.

Inspired by the harmonograph, a machine invented during the mid-19th century, Rex developed his own version of the machine, he tells Wired.co.uk, to create “a never-ending experiment where it is impossible to produce two identical drawings.”

With a background in carpentry, Rex custom-designed and built the Drawingmachine himself after a period of trial and error, which included creating a smaller Drawingmachine a few years ago. This version is constructed from wood, metal, vinyl and concrete. It occupies 380 square feet of floor space. With two 9-foot-high pendulum towers supporting pendulums of up to 165 pounds, images as large as 9 feet by 9 feet can be produced.

Explaining his motivations behind the project, Rex says: “I am interested in the machine as a sculpture in space, a constantly changing mobile. In addition to this, the universe within the drawings is interesting by virtue of their spatial, textural, temporal qualities.”

As a result, the Drawingmachine is a rather uncontrollable beast. “It’s an instrument with which you can draw very precise spiral geometry by only using gravity,” he says. “Getting to know the machine, using it as a tool to improvise and create specific visual expression takes a lot of practice and experimentation, as any other tool or instrument” would.

Check out the video of Rex’s Drawingmachine in action, above, and see Wired UK’s gallery of Drawingmachine images.