The Aesthetics of Drawing in a time of cyberspace

Dave Lynch: Laser projection of an animation from a plane onto a cloud. 2015

In 1999 Roy Ascott wrote and disseminated an influential paper on what he called TECHNOETIC AESTHETICS 

100 Terms and Definitions for the Post-biological Era Link 

Most importantly he wrote a new definition of art.

Art

While traditionally focused on the appearance of things and their representation, art is now concerned with processes of interaction, transformation, and emergence .

A drawing that tries to illustrate how table tennis could be recorded as a process. 

So 16 years after the emergence of Ascott's paper what is drawing as an art form doing that recognises this 'post-biological era'? 

I was reminded of Ascott's paper yesterday when attending the artist Dave Lynch's launch and talk on 'Project Nimbus'. Find an article from New Scientist on this work here. Dave and his scientist co-collaborator Mike Nix gave an illustrated talk on the project and how it had evolved from Dave's earlier investigation into how to do moving projection work from a tricycle mounted projector. The drawings of a moving horse are all taken from Muybridge's original photographs and the inspiration for the laser projector they used taken from Muybridge's paper on how he actually set out to not only take the photographs but how to animate them. Follow this Link for Muybridge's full story and original illustrations. The 'Nimbus Project' was a welcome reminder that innovation and invention are at their best when artists, technologists and scientists are collaborating. The most exciting aspect yesterday was how the collaboration worked and how as people coming from very different backgrounds they were able to enter territories non of them as individuals would have ventured into. 

Drawings done from Muybridge's photographs

If you look back over the history of art you will see that there are times when artists work very closely with other specialists, in particular during the Renaissance artists were not just working with mathematicians and architects they were often adepts of these other skills themselves. 

I noticed all the machinery Dave and his team had put together was laser cut. This was all done using Illustrator files and an introduction to Illustrator software is one of the drawing workshops offered to all specialist drawing students. However just because it takes a bit of time to get to grips with it, several students last year didn't either attend, or never took time to get their head round the software. My feeling is that this type of avoidance comes from a view of art that is becoming more and more outdated. If you don't embrace technology you will not be able to fully reflect the issues of your time, which are as much technologically driven as psychologically and sociologically shaped. Learn 'Flash' as an animation tool, make videos of your drawing process, record sounds to support your research and see yourself as a multimedia artist. Yes the pencil is still a fantastic tool, charcoal can still resonate with the craft of slow wood burning in the forest, but how we enter into a dialogue with others in a technologically soaked society must at some point engage with the issue of electronic media and how it shapes meaning. 

The old and the new are not separate things. As technology advances we approach it through the lens of our past experiences, and for artists in particular the past is immensely rich. Lynch would not have done the work he did without an awareness of Muybridge, a 19th century photographer. Artists like Bill Viola clearly reference the work of Renaissance artists in their video projections. 

Bill Viola: The Veiling

So perhaps you might rethink your practice during the summer. Think about how drawing is mediated with technology and spend time learning some new software. No new skill is ever wasted and the more you learn the more transferrable your skills are out in the wider world. Remember if art is going to mean something to others, its language must be shaped in a form that others can understand.  Technology is itself a type of language and one that should not be alien to a contemporary artist. 

If you are interested in art and science collaborations why not attend the sessions held at the Packhorse by Superposition? link Superposition are an art and science collaborative and 'Project Nimbus' has developed out of one of their collaborations. Check out when the next meeting is and why not just go along and see what is happening. Drawing is as much about the 21st century as it was about 30,000BC, but you don't have to make images on cave walls anymore, you could be making them on clouds. 

See also:

Computer generated art
Virtual reality
3D Printing
Computer animation
Data visualisation
Artificial intelligence