WICHITA, KANSAS—When Lee Shiney paints, he can rely as much upon tinkering as he does artistic skill. Shiney sometimes paints using paint-filled cups suspended from wires and moved with various pulley and clockwork systems he builds. The paint drips onto the canvas below, which often rotates on a turntable.

While all this movement can be handled manually, Shiney now uses a computer connected to custom-made circuit boards to move the cups along special tracks he builds to create the images, which resemble sunbursts or bacteria. While some may wonder if using all these gizmos means his work is not art, others view it as a natural outgrowth of our technological society. "The artist’s intent is the same whether they use mechanical means or a physical brush," says Elizabeth Dunbar, curator of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri. Whatever other people's views are, Shiney intends to keep creating his automatic artwork. "I just do what interests me," he says. For more information, visit www.leeshiney.com.