The Magic Slate

Magic Slate

Today is the first day of my retirement and of course at the end of any period of your life you tend to reflect back on what you have achieved. As I reflected I automatically checked to see if I had any work e mails, and was reminded of how quickly you are wiped away by the institution you have worked with. My work e mail had already been taken down, I no longer had an electronic presence and if course all of those files that record the many and various activities I have worked on over the last 48 years are no longer accessible and have probably been wiped. It was I realised rather like I had been working on a Magic Slate for all those years. However, as always I shall try to turn my experience into a post about something to do with drawing. 

The Magic Slate is a children's drawing toy that was invented in the USA by R. A. Watkins in 1923. Besides being a toy, it is also often used as an erasable message board and communication device for people unable to speak.

A stylus is used to write or draw on a transparent plastic sheet which when pressed down creates an impression on the layer beneath. This layer transfers itself to the back of the plastic sheet where the stylus has pushed it into the waxy backing. The “magic sheet” is lightly attached to the card surround, so that it can be lifted away from the wax backing by a sliding bar when you have completed your drawing or writing and need to erase it. The most interesting aspect of this arrangement is that the resinous wax layer that exists behind the plastic sheet retains etched into itself traces of all the previous impressions. 

Sigmund Freud once wrote an essay about this very process, 'A note upon the Mystic Writing Pad'.  He wrote the essay to explain his theory of memory and used what he called the 'Wunderblock' (the German name for a magic slate) to illustrate his ideas. The outer coating or transparent sheet on which we read the writing or drawing represented for him the protective layer of the mind. He writes that the layer protects the mind from too much excitation and that if this thin layer is torn or contaminated (in Freud's day thin transparent paper was used instead of transparent plastic), the Wunderblock would cease to work, in the same way that trauma can irreparably damage the psyche. The stylus for Freud representing a stimulus from the outside world. The papery layer is the conscious mind and the wax resin is representative of the unconscious.

Freud thought that the mind retained impressions of memories in the unconscious. This is why a forgotten trauma can still effect how we emotionally operate, even long after an event. The main difference between the magic slate and the mind being that the mind's traces can come back and disrupt psychic life, especially in dreams and after trauma. Freud wrote, "The permanent trace of what was written is retained upon the wax slab itself and is legible in suitable lights." Therefore it could be argued that Mystic Pads have a particular kind of memory. Freud went on to state, "I do not think it is too far-fetched, to compare the celluloid and waxed paper cover with the system of Pcpt-Cs. (Perception-Consciousness) and its protective shield, the wax slab with the unconscious behind them, and the appearance and disappearance of the writing with the flickering-up and passing-away of consciousness in the process of perception."

A writer on the Electronic Labyrinth website takes the idea further and points out that Derrida in 'Freud and the Scene of Writing,' states that perception is itself a kind of writing machine like the Mystic Writing Pad. The marks on the pad are not visible due to the stylus leaving a deposit on the sheet of plastic, the marks only becoming visible because of the contact the wax has on the reverse side of the sheet of plastic, which Derrida argues, is also the case in perception. None of us apprehend the world directly, but only retrospectively; our sense of that which is beyond ourselves is the product of previous memories, previous writings. "Writing," says Derrida, "supplements perception before perception even appears to itself" (Writing and Difference 224). Accessed from: http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0257.html

The Mystic Writing Pad, then, is for Derrida a model of the primacy of writing, of the way in which we can only ever experience the world after the fact, through traces of previous experiences and through the signifiers which are for Derrida in effect the condition of being.

What is intriguing about this is that a process of image making can also become a metaphor for how the mind works. In my recent post on drawings as storage devices I was trying to articulate  a similar concept, if drawings are thought about in a certain way they can also be seen as a type of battery as well as a material metaphor. The process of making drawings produces something far more than just the mechanics of how they are made. By extending Freud's metaphor, another insight from the Mystic Pad essay could be that what makes the human mind distinct isn't just its "layers" for perception and storage, it is also about the nature of traces and how they can be understood. Because a trace is by its very nature only a fragment that is left by contact with a much more complex entity; these traces have to be interpreted and in their interpretation we rarely achieve accuracy. This could be a even deeper metaphor for how perception operates.

Using a magic slate to make a small animation

Because the transparent plastic sheet that overs a magic slate is very reflective, any drawing you do is hard to see and your body is reflected in its watery like surface. In trying to make this basic animation, I began to realise that it had another potential metaphorical direction, one that was about trying to write on water, a concept akin to walking on water, but with the vague presence of the author appearing to float around and mingle with the images. Something to return to perhaps another time. 

References:

Derrida, J. (2001) Writing and difference. London: Routledge.

Freud, S. (1991) A Note upon the Mystic Writing-Pad, General Psychological Theory.

The Electronic Labyrinth 

See also:

Drawings as aesthetic transducers 

Drawing devices

More drawing devices

Using viewfinders

More theories about drawing

On page 151 of the book, The Comics of Chris Ware: Drawing as a way of Thinking, Shawn Gilmore uses Thierry Groensteen's concept of 'braiding' to show how Ware uses visual simultaneity to effect meaning. I have long been a believer in the power of comic books to deliver complex ideas and theory seems to have now come to terms with this too and has accepted that what was once seen as a low brow or low class art form, can now be regarded as just as important an art form as any other.
So how can you use these theories to open out ideas related to art history as a whole?

I wasn't totally convinced by Scott McCloud's triangle of abstraction but it helps to resolve several issues surrounding levels of reality and can help us to rethink Plato's old 'Theory of Forms' that suggested that the reality we experience is only a shadow of true reality which is in fact a Realm of Forms, which are abstract, time transcending, perfect concepts or ideals. As we move through McCloud's triangle, we get a sense of moving between different levels of realism and this is in itself very interesting.

I'm not sure about the three points of the triangle, having one as reality, another language and a third as the picture plane is awkward because these are very different concepts. Even so it sort of works and I can see clearly what he is getting at. The dotted line that separates the emoji from the word is an interesting one, but if he had been Chinese perhaps a more subtle line could have been drawn. 

The concept in the top left speech balloon stating that, "Things can be themselves" is a philosophically interesting one and one that needs unpicking a little. The fact that artists such as Paul Klee began to explore the various abstract elements used to make drawn images, such as point, line and plane, doesn't automatically make these things in 'themselves' or things in their own right. They can instead be read as categorisations of language, a product of our ability to atomise or break down things into smaller parts. We are looking at a type of process here rather than a set of things. 

This reminds me of how Scott McCloud wrote about the 'gutter' between two images in a comic book sequence. Yes, you can point to the gutter but what you cant point to is how the brain is processing its encounter. Someone has to be able to take two unconnected images and mentally construct them into an idea that in some way 'fills the gap' by projecting an invented narrative into it. 

According to Moszkowicz, who uses Ricoeur's ideas to develop a 'gutter' concept, it’s the observer who “simultaneously takes the story outside itself and yet holds it within himself”. This is about keeping a distance at the same time as inviting closeness, suggesting that sense-making and imagination can take place everywhere: within, between, alongside, on top of, next to, across and in the edges between things, as in Deridda's concept of the parergon. The central idea here being that it is the passage between an inner and outer reality that is more important than any fixed thing. The various stages that we set out between reality and fiction, or the art object and the world are important as they can reflect or mirror what goes on between ourselves and the world. Sometimes we hold within one image several approaches at the same time, which is similar to how when we perceive the world we simultaneously mix inner and outer approaches, imagination and perception fusing. In El Greco's wonderful painting of The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, he has constructed the top half of the image as a flight of religious fantasy, whilst the bottom half represents the reality of what was then contemporary Spain. The division between the two halves is occupied by the assumption into heaven of the count's deceased soul in the form of an "ethereal" baby.

El Greco: The Burial of the Count of Orgaz

If we now place an image of the El Greco painting on top of Scott McCloud's diagram we can begin to see another idea emerging, one that can relate Plato's ideas of perfect forms to everyday reality and which uses Derrida's idea of the parergon as a form of sliding divide between reality and fiction. In this case the frame as an edge between the artwork and the world, now enters inside the work itself, in El Greco's case it could be argued that the division between heaven and earth occupied by the space above the collected heads of the Spanish grandees being the edge of the frame. The ideal forms that inhabit the picture plane being in this case the ideal forms inhabiting a Catholic vision of heaven.

The two images of my own above are both related in that they are from the same sequence of drawings, but I have put them together missing out several other images from the sequence. What interests me is how I can still develop a narrative simply because of their close relationship to the gutter between them. It might be a bit of a struggle, but I can feel my brain seeking out some sort of story, some sort of imagined series of events that could make the one image become linked to the other. One implication of this is that I could regard a series of images in an exhibition in exactly the same way. The gap or gutter between images can be adjusted and made narrower or wider, which could imply a closer or further relationship between each image. The 'meaning' or 'communication' coming from the images is now though also entangled in how we read an image within a frame and how we read 'between frames'. 

Derrida came up with the term ‘parergon’ when he was writing ‘The Truth in Painting’, using it to explain why when looking at a framed work of art, the frame is part of the wall but when looking at the wall it is part of the work. The frame existing as an idea between the two, as a separate entity. He stated, "neither inside nor outside, neither above nor below, it disconcerts any opposition but does not remain indeterminate and it gives rise to the work.”
The function of the parergon being to create a context for the process of framing.
The parergon being both a literal framing and a metaphysical concept.

Such stretches of the theoretical frame, may indeed break the rules of logic, but at times we need to break rules in order to arrive at a new framework of thinking. For many years the comic book world was excluded from consideration by fine art historians, but the reality is that we can use any discipline to give us insights into any other discipline. For instance death doulas exist as a profession to help individuals cross the divide between life and death. Images can exist in order to meditate on exactly the same thing, but perhaps it gets more interesting if we ask a death doula to help us reflect upon an image? Would we in doing so be using shamanic thought processes and if so does this take us back into engaging with pre-historical types of consciousness? 

We only stop perceiving the world when we die. Layers of reality are deeply interconnected and perhaps nowhere near as clearly organised as in McCloud's triangle. If we look at visual perception through the combined lenses of art and neuroscience, it should be possible to explain why the brain/body finds more meaning in incoming data than given by incoming signals alone. This on the one hand I would suggest is the mystery of the gutter and on the other the internalisation/externalisation of image processing. Imagination it would seem is inseparable from perception. 

The idea of externalising thoughts about the body is central to my work at the moment. Working with the ancient concept of votives, I'm exploring how people can be persuaded to take an internal concept, such as a pain in the foot, and transfer it into an external object. Images have a sort of direct feedback mechanism, in that observers 'echo' what they see. In the same way that we begin to reflect the body posture of someone we are talking to, we mimic both internally and externally the shape of an idea as an image. 

A object designed to be both seen and touched, made to reflect both the shape of a hand becoming a fist (to grab), as well as the idea of two humans clinging, (to clove to)

The object above was made in response to someone telling me that they were lonely. As an artist I wanted to both externalise the feeling tone that was at the centre of the inter human communication and to feed back into the making process both image and perceptual instigation. The feedback from the recipient of the small object I made was very encouraging and suggested that a 'real' communication had been effected. At the core of the idea was a visual narrative, a sort of graphic animation in the mind, which brings me back full circle to comic book ideas of how to abstract from reality. 

The image development process behind the making of the loneliness votive

If we return to Thierry Groensteen's concept of 'braiding' a concept that explores how uses of visual simultaneity can effect meaning, we can push it a little further and look at how imagination is inseparable from perception. The image of something and its perception become entangled, and the relationship could be thought of as that between braiding and knotting. When we braid we wrap threads around each other, as we do so we develop patterns based on how we have interconnected the threads. However without a knot tied around their ends the braids will quickly unravel. The image is that knot and the braids various perceptions. An image in effect holds things together, just long enough for the various effects of perceptions to be understood as to their potential for action, be this fight or flight or something much more subtle, such as how we appreciate a tree coming into bud or the flight pattern of a swallow. 

References

Ball, D. and Khlman, M. (2010) The Comics of Chris Ware: Drawing is a way of thinking University Press of Mississippi

McCloud, S. (1994). Understanding comics. New York: HarperPerennial.

Moszkowicz, J. (n.d.). Time, Narrative and the Gutter in Graphic Novels: how philosophical thinking can make something out of nothing. In: Cultural Expression and Formal Expression in the Graphic Novel. Inter-Disciplinary Press, UK, pp. 197-205. ISBN 978-1-84888-199-0  Accessed from http://ssudl.solent.ac.uk/2596/ 10. 09. 2019

The interplay between neuroscience and art

See also:

Richard McGuire's 'Here'

The Beano and Viz

A much more detailed post on Derrida's concept of the parergon related to ideas about edges. 

To use theory or not to use theory

Drawing and philosophy

Visual semiology using the Sherman realism axis. The PDF linked has an example of how this works and can be used in conjunction with Scott McCloud's triangle of abstraction.