Lionel Maes : Printing Beaufort

Printing Beaufort was first shown in the context of the collective exhibition C'est du vent, with Loraine Chassain and Laurent David.

The HP C6602B inkjet cartridge is lying still, with the print head facing up, on a sheet of rice paper. Every three minutes, it prints one of the levels on the Beaufort scale: Calm / Light air / Light breeze / Gentle breeze / Moderate breeze / Fresh breeze / Strong breeze / Strong breeze / Moderate Gale / Gale / Strong gale / Storm / Violent storm / Hurricane-force. Each print takes from two days to a week.

C'est du vent | Collective exhibition @ Melissa Hansel Gallery, Brussels (January 2026) | Picture by Loraine Chassain — C'est du vent | Collective exhibition @ Melissa Hansel Gallery, Brussels (January–February 2026) | Picture by Loraine Chassain

C’est du vent: a collaborative exhibition by Loraine Chassain, Laurent David, and Lionel Maes, presented by Melissa Ansel Gallery.

C'est du vent | Collective exhibition @ Melissa Hansel Gallery, Brussels (January–February 2026) | Picture by Loraine Chassain

The HP C6602B is a blue inkjet cartridge with an integrated printhead, compatible with HP ADDMASTER IJ6000 POS (Point of Sale) printer models, and therefore intended for use in a "transactional printing system"—such as for tickets, receipts, and invoices.

The HP C6602B is designed to perform mechanical back-and-forth movements controlled by software-driven motors, inside a black or white plastic housing, at a distance of less than 1 mm from the print media, which must not exceed 7.5 cm in width.

And

Connect the HP C6602B to an InkShield electronic circuit—developed and published in 2011 by Nicholas C. Lewis—connected to an Arduino Uno microcontroller.

Then

Keep it stationary, with the print heads facing upward, and launch a print job, that is, the ejection of ink droplets for each dot that makes up each letter of each word, for each level of the Beaufort scale—which has 12 levels—every 3 minutes.

Hold it a few centimeters away from the paper and print continuously for a length of 15 meters, without line breaks.