This is how my talk was introduced in the blurb that advertised what was going to be delivered:
Garry Barker’s presentation, 'The Emergence of Distinction in the Visualisation of Interoception: Drawing as a Boundary-Making Act', will explore the parallels between the inception of drawing as a distinction between one thing and something else, the evolution of human territoriality, and the conceptualisation of the universe’s origin. It argues that during workshops designed to help participants visualise interoceptual experiences; that it became important to develop an understanding of drawing as a primary act of distinction. Defining a somatic feeling is linked to the introduction of fundamental mathematical logic and biological processes observed in nature. By examining the philosophical underpinnings of Spencer-Brown’s 'Laws of Form' alongside the evolutionary context of boundary-making in animals, and the visualisation of embodied thinking through drawing, this presentation seeks to articulate how drawing reflects an intrinsic human impulse to mark territory and create meaning from the void of our own bodies.
The presentation posits the significant parallels between the moment a drawing begins, the territorial nature of human and animal existence, and our understanding of the inception of the universe itself and that the mark making that lies at the centre of the act of drawing, is in its most elemental form, a distinction-making process.
Using images made in response to the visualisation of interoceptual experiences, alongside images of mathematical set theory and animal territorial marking, the presentation will unfold relationships that are designed to illustrate how an evolution of signalling, from unicellular organisms to human art forms, reflects an intrinsic animal as well as material need to mark distinctions as we attempt to articulate our existence within the universe.
Reading the introduction again after a few weeks makes me cringe, but the core of what I was going to talk about is there. I was trying to get at some sort of ontological core, an attempt to look at what underlies certain types of abstract thinking and to suggest that deep down underneath their conception lies some form of reality that stems from how things are. In particular I was thinking about the idea of edges between things and boundaries.
A long time ago I put up a blog post about edges, which was where at the time my thinking was and as I've moved on somewhat since then, thought it time to revisit a pretty fundamental question, where are the edges of a drawing? A question that is inseparable from another one; where are the edges of anything?
This is not as simple a question as it might seem and in my presentation I explored the idea of a drawing's edges being about boundaries and I further argued that boundaries were themselves concepts that had emerged from the evolution of all animal species. So what did I mean?
Diagram of an amoeba
In my drawing of an amoeba above I have used a dashed line to define its edges, rather than a continuous one. This is to suggest that an amoeba's boundaries are permeable. If not the amoeba would not be able to catch food and eat it, it would also not be able to remove waste. On the other hand if it had no boundaries it would simply dissolve out into the water it lives within. We are as a biological entity, very similar to the amoeba and we also need to bring certain things into our bodies, such as air and nutrients as well as have ways to remove waste materials. Our bodies are constantly being interpenetrated by sweat, urine, liquids, food, faeces, snot, air, wax and mucus, there being a constant going into and coming out of the world into which we are embedded.
I thought this diagram of the body was interesting, as it transforms it into a flat rectangle. It is now in essence no different to a sheet of paper. All drawings of the body flatten it out, but they often include visual clues that remind us that the body is in reality a three dimensional object. Greenberg reminded us that when engaged in making art on a flat surface, any form of illusion designed to make us think that what we are looking at is 'real', is in effect a lie. I suspect therefore that he would have far preferred the drawing of the body above to the one below.
Max Brodel: The throat
However information still needs to flow in and out of a drawing and as its edges are where it meets the rest of the world, we can in our minds, begin to see a close analogy with the amoeba drawing above, as well as with the flattened out image of the body's various systems whereby it interacts with the exterior world.
Every drawing sits within the world
As it is looked at a drawing is constantly in some sort of exchange with the perceiver and the surrounding world. There will also, as in any communication, be a lot of wastage, whether we like it or not. What interests me in this instance, is the fact that what is percolating in and out of the drawing is often unknown, but you sense it is something. The drawing is in effect changing the world, just as the drawing's situation in the world changes it.
The space between the edge of a drawing and the world
Deridda has written extensively about the space between the edge of a drawing and the surrounding 'real' world and he uses the term ‘the parergon’ to describe it. He understands this space as one that is always coming “against or beside, the work that has been done", he states that "it touches and cooperates within the operation, from a certain outside, but neither simply outside nor simply inside”. He uses, after looking at drapery and colonnades, an example of the frame to explain what he means. (Derrida, p. 24, 1979) The space indicated by a frame being the boundary between the way we think about art and the way we act within the world. In my 'frame' drawing above, the space/frame includes traces of the marks I used to indicate various passages between a drawing and its environment, the space/frame being activated by the exchanges.
Edges are strange things. As I look around me I see a table top, it has edges, the sort that are defined by an abrupt change in direction. My eyes sweep horizontality across the desk surface, and then as I come to its edges, each one stops with a dramatic vertical drop. This experience is a common one associated with furniture. On the table top is a laptop computer. It too is seen to lie in a horizontal plane and has a vertical drop at the edges of its now closed screen, but the drop is no more than a centimetre, therefore I see the laptop as belonging in some way to the table, it sits within a shallow space that appears to unify several other items that are also lying on the table. A book, some sheets of paper, an old I-pod. They are all rectangular and have edges. Their horizontality is defined by the table top, if the table top had been raised on one side to form a steep angle, all of these objects would also have had to follow suit, until they began to slide down the table top and fell onto the floor. They are also all perceptually permeable. Each one acting in a slightly different manner as it interacts with the wider world.
For instance the book is something that as an object can be opened and closed. It is clearly entitled 'Picasso's Animals'. As I open it I'm faced with a text about Picasso's relationship with goats. For his 75th birthday he wanted a goat and although one did not arrive on his actual birthday, two did eventually materialise. Why do I remember this, perhaps because it is my 75th birthday this week and I have had great difficulty thinking about what people could get me. A goat was not on my birthday list and if I had put one on it I doubt if anyone would have responded. Once closed the book presents me with an image of a Picasso drawing of an owl, its eyes made from a photographic collage of cut out human eyes, eyes that I suspect came from a cut up photograph of himself. The book is an object with very clear boundaries or edges, but it is leaking into my mind, because my perceptual apparatus embraces it within a visual and tactile framework, that is wired into all my brain's existing preconceptions.
The lap top computer is now open, it has to be open so that I can type the words I'm typing. I had to break or cross a boundary to get in. I needed to put in a password on opening the computer by raising its lid, which itself contains its screen. It's edges or boundaries appear to be very different to the book. It is linked to invisible things such as the Internet and an electricity supply. I can push a memory stick into one of its ports and pull information out of it and interact with it myself directly by pushing down on the various keys in front of me. Like the book I can read text as it appears on the screen, as I do from an open page, but I can also create text, as I do now. I am sucked into the interface by a variety of engaging interactive components and it feels even more porous than the book. It not only seems to leak into my mind, it seems to be feeling out other minds too, this blog page, will as soon as it is published be available to all sorts of people, many of whom I have never met.
There is a drawing on the desk, it is drawn on an open right side notebook page and sits next to couple of written notes that were made on the left hand page. The writing states:
He will live on in memories.
Order sealing wax.
To send off a skimming stone for Oscar.
Ken tells me Oscar is dead.He does not publicly mourn his son.
The writing reminds me of something I need to do. A private ritual that will mean nothing to anyone else but myself. The words on that page, leaving the table and yet not leaving the table. They can be read by others but without an understanding of the full context. It's getting dark and I'm going to stop typing for a while, I shall return tomorrow morning and when I do, as I walk into the room I will again see these items lying on a table top, initially inert, reserved within their respective boundaries, their edges though begin fraying, as soon as I enter the room.
The edges of these things are their surfaces, but most surfaces when you get very close to them become full of holes. In particular paper is extremely perforated.
Microscopic view of a 'flat' paper surface
In order to contain an image, we often put a frame around it. The frame reinforces our awareness of the edge in two directions. A frame puts glass or transparent perspex material over the top surface of a drawing and a wooden surround around its four edges. The surface acts as a type of boundary membrane, but so do the edges, which can also be seen as a type of boundary. In fact if we hold up the drawing within a frame such as those devised by Lina Bo Bardi, we can see clearly that the back of a drawing is also permeable to our gaze.
Lina Bo Bardi: Glass easels
As I have already pointed out, Derrida used the word 'parergon' to define a sort of "supplement" to the main thing. Think in this case of a drawing being the main thing and its frame a secondary object. However Derrida being Derrida, decides that this relationship between the core and the periphery can be reversed. The supplement, the outside or secondary object, can be seen to be the centrepiece. Without a frame, the thing framed "cannot distinguish itself from itself". In my mind Derrida's frame is a sort of psychic space around an object that allows it to be itself and yet also interact with the rest of the world. This is the amoeba solution. Its boundaries need to be permeable. If not the object or drawing or thing, would not be able to nourish or maintain itself and if it had no boundaries it would simply dissolve into the surrounding environment. This is I realise another animist interpretation, but as a materialist, everything has I believe at some point to be able to merge and interconnect with everything else.
Derrida as a writer often thinks of things as bookish realities, at one point describing the parergon as a book's liminal text. A liminal space is one such as a doorstep, a place between things, a space you need to pass through in order to get from one space to another. It can be thought of as a mediator, something that helps us to become engaged with the main event. In Derrida's mind perhaps a title, a foreword, a preface or even an index or commentary. In this case the help may become a far more potent item than the original text, by being more succinct and therefore more understandable, the supplement now becoming the driver. Lina Bo Bardi's glass easels are sometimes more visually powerful than the drawings or paintings they are meant to display, by framing the artworks in a new way, we are encouraged to approach them differently, we may for instance spend as much time exploring the back of an image as its front.
Derrida as a writer often thinks of things as bookish realities, at one point describing the parergon as a book's liminal text. A liminal space is one such as a doorstep, a place between things, a space you need to pass through in order to get from one space to another. It can be thought of as a mediator, something that helps us to become engaged with the main event. In Derrida's mind perhaps a title, a foreword, a preface or even an index or commentary. In this case the help may become a far more potent item than the original text, by being more succinct and therefore more understandable, the supplement now becoming the driver. Lina Bo Bardi's glass easels are sometimes more visually powerful than the drawings or paintings they are meant to display, by framing the artworks in a new way, we are encouraged to approach them differently, we may for instance spend as much time exploring the back of an image as its front.
Thinking about the edge of things, eventually opens out an issue about 'thingness'. The idea of a thing is that it is separate from other things. But as I have pointed out, all things are in constant interconnection. Communication between things suggests that the edges of things are always frayed and that things bleed into one another. If we get close enough to things we can see how porous they really are, all living things requiring points for the surrounding world's entry and exit and all inorganic matter needing to engage in the quantum flux of spacetime, which enfolds everything in its various energy fields. The edge is therefore a boundary that is in reality simply an idea, a concept that allows us to decide where one thing begins and ends, rather than it being any sort of fixed reality.
We should never forget that when animals set out to define their territory, that boundary within which they live most of their lives, many of them do so by using their body's waste products, either defalcating or urinating to mark out the perimeters. The micro project of an amoeba, becoming an evolutionary reinvention on a macro scale. Once a territory is defined an animal can begin to think about doing other things, as they are no longer having to constantly think about how to defend borders, their olfactory signs doing that for them. Perhaps these signs can be thought of as first drawings, being both markers and definitions of physical space, that are also intimations of a creature's need for a mental space within which to do something more than just survive.
Rhino marking territory
Reference:
Derrida, J. & Owens, C. (1979)The Parergon October, Vol. 9 (Summer, 1979), pp. 3-41 (39 pages) https://doi.org/10.2307/778319
A recording of the Drawing Research online symposium, where you can listen to the talks given, including my own.
See also:
Edges
See also:
Edges
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