I have just spent two days (11-12thJuly) attending a Drawing Research Network conference on embodied drawing in Loughborough. This is becoming an annual event for me and I saw several familiar faces also involved with drawing research. As on other occasions I have made notes, and as always my notes tend to be rather idiosyncratic because I tend to get side tracked by my own thoughts as they spring up unannounced while people are presenting. So again a reminder to the reader not to take these notes as a record of what went on, but as an individual’s personal experience of the event.
Embodied drawing like embodied thinking itself is an area of conceptual interest and theoretical focus that has grown exponentially over the last few years. I have referred to embodied thinking several times in previous posts and as an area of investigation it has evolved from some of the debates that used to characterise phenomenological discourse. However this is not the place for a history lesson, so I will simply present the notes which were made from the two days of presentations.
Day one
Emma Robinson: Embodied drawing for the mind
Emma was concerned to remind us of drawing’s power to deal with our present problems of high anxiety. It can be used as an experiential tool that can be used to create calmness and help slow us down. In particular if used in conjunction with an appreciation of ‘nature’, it can focus a healing power that comes directly from a prolonged exposure to nature’s wonder.
Drawing from observation can help us ‘see’ what nature is offering us and can slow down our looking so that we begin to actually see things. Emma pointed to the rise of the colouring in book as being of vital importance if we are to understand what is going on at the moment. She quoted statistics as to the rise in the numbers of colouring in books that have been sold, and these are now in the several millions per year. As she pointed out numbers of this size must represent something to be taken seriously. She reminded us that many of these books are effectively “colouring in nature”. This activity can be seen as part of drawing’s role as an experiential tool.
Emma spoke of her work as taking a ‘salutogenic’ approach. My understanding of this, is an approach that begins with a focus on what is the known richness or wealth of a particular experience or activity, rather than to begin with a critique of failure or problematic issues. This was chosen as a beginning because of the prevalence of ‘eco-anxiety’ within many existing modes of thinking in relation to the anthropocene. Basically to focus on factors that support human health and well-being, rather than on factors that cause disease.
She was also concerned to look at what was going on as having transmedia or multi-modal applications, (As highlighted by the work of Henry Jenkins and as touched on before in earlier blog posts) Therefore when beginning this exploration she wanted to have something that took into account our bodies, our breath and our mind and she wanted to make sure that this approach had applied value for people with anxiety and depression. (I was a bit worried about her understanding of multi-modal narratives, because on the one hand she was aware of how media was one of the causes of modern day anxiety, but on the other she wanted to explore multi-modal uses, which usually entails trans-media exploration.
She was looking for collaborations between artists and health professionals and had evidence that bringing art and nature together was a strong antidote for anxiety. In order to test out her theories she had begun to run sessions in a local library that members of the public could sign up to. Interestingly these courses filled up straight away, so demand was obviously out there.
The courses she was running were working well and had certain rules, the first being the banning of mobile phones so that people were able to draw without distraction. She would begin by showing participants ‘real’ drawings done by others, in this case some superb Victorian plant illustrations and was using Daniel Siegal’s three ‘o’s as a way of maintaining focus on the looking, ‘openness, observation and objectivity’. (Siegal introduced the term 'Mindsight' to describe the skill of being able to reflect on the connection that exists between your body and your mind) By doing this she believed drawing could open out new cerebral pathways for the learners. (I was by now feeling that she was actually suggesting that her students should drop multi-modal communication and focus on getting back to single channel communication systems such as drawing.)
Drawing it was argued develops memory and what we can remember we can actively apply. Students were also asked to engage with and draw other non-observational forms such as spirals, circular mandala forms, repetitions, etc. as well as attending to their breathing, sometimes drawing the shadows of plants, creating memory marks, making rubbings, splitting forms into two halves in order to remake as wholes, and looking at producing templates from some of these activities for them to colour in, at I presumed a later date. Emma reminded us again that over 15, 000, 000 people using colouring in books cant be wrong and that the art world was very snobby and that it would normally dismiss an idea like this. (I was however reminded of the fact that I bought a Wim Delvoye colouring in book from one of his exhibitions nine years ago and I was worried that her approach mixed up approaches to mindfulness, confusing observational techniques with abstract or non-figurative representations. See some of my earlier thoughts on
The feedback from students who had taken the course was very positive and included such stories as students now buying their own sketchbooks and taking matters into their own hands.
Emma’s other work is looking at endangered plant species and as an Australian artist /researcher she will be very aware of climate change and its effects on plant life. She has a Vimeo account on which she hosts work that reflects these issues. I personally wanted Emma to show us more about this work and I felt that her deeper research was perhaps in this area and that it was already informing the work with anxious people, but that she hadn't had time to unpack how and why it was impacting on her approaches to mindfulness.
Joanne Macdonald: Drawing Bodies
Lockhart, Hamilton and Fyfe, ‘the Anatomy of the Human Body’
This presentation was about rethinking anatomy. Drawing in this case was also regarded as being a collaborative endeavour, and the presentation was dedicated to those that leave their bodies behind for the purposes of medical research. The question Joanne asked was, “How do anatomy drawings help to teach medical students to understand the body?” In particular, one anatomy textbook, that had been revolutionary in its time and was still being used, was being looked at, the one produced in 1950 by Lockhart, Hamilton and Fyfe, ‘the Anatomy of the Human Body’. This key textbook had in its time changed the way that drawings were used in the study of anatomy. The book had been made to accompany actual dissections and the objective of this study was to produce new drawings and new dissections to accompany them .
Lockhart, Hamilton and Fyfe, ‘the Anatomy of the Human Body’.
We were reminded that knowledge of anatomy was inter-medial; students work from models that can be constructed and re-constructed, make models themselves, explore different aspects of the body by dealing with changes in scale by examining large close-ups or expanded models of sections, look at medical imaging, take part in VR experiences, use text books, wall charts and take part in the reality of dissection itself. All these methods are used to get students to understand anatomy, each approach helping to understand a particular aspect of the discipline and gradually as they are all worked through, eventually a holistic understanding is reached by the student. These methods include conceptual, schematic and representational modes of visualisation. In order for these various visualisations to be produced the artist and the anatomist had to work together, each of them also having to be clear as to how their role would be used to ensure the most effective communication. I was particularly interested in this need for multi modal communication, because understanding here is vital, get it wrong and people will die under the knife. Therefore a reinforcement of learning is taken for granted, which makes me feel that we are not so worried about how well other aspects of drawing work, because we just don't regard them is as important enough to ensure a clear and accurate communication is made. In fact the very ambiguity of some drawings' effects was often praised as being part of the interest. Several presentations in relation to workshops that were held over the two days included a subtext to the effect that the workshops were excellent because everyone interpreted the tasks
Joanne had had to undertake making her own dissections as part of the process and reminded us that the one thing that is unforgettable about dissecting rooms is the smell. Anatomy is one of those licenced activities that requires you to be signed into the room; you cant take photographs, there are no external windows, but conversely a radio seems to be always playing, to relieve the anxiety and introduce a sense of normality.
We were reminded that what needed to be visualised was a three dimensional object in space (the body and its organs). It was vital that orientation was constantly understood, whilst undertaking an operation apparently it is very easy to lose track of left from right or up from down, because once inside the body normal orientation triggers are hard to spot. (This reminded me of an archaeologist’s need for an orientation grid when undertaking excavations)
The complex drawings of Alberto Morroco, (above) were the starting point for this investigation, but they had to be seen in conjunction with dissection and the decision to do this was for the researcher quite a powerful moment. This led to a series of experiences that were important such as the first cutting of the skin, how to hold the scalpel, and how like that is to holding a pen. The making of a line across a body with a scalpel blade was described, and how as you cut you feel for different qualities of skin as it passes over bone or different muscle structures. Touch and sight come together for this type of understanding, lines of tension within the skin revealing an archaeology of the body's previous behaviour. The skin being part of a materialisation of a life lived.
Like anatomy, drawing can expose realities that were previously hidden, in this case the body is encountered at the 1 to 1 scale of the everyday, there is no separation, but as Joanne worked, she became aware that those very mundane but significantly highly charged things such as eye lashes sometimes became the things she wanted to draw. I have no images of the new drawings being made, but the presentation made a powerful impression on me and I could see the need for the research as well as the project making me think about how the way we read drawings will have changed since the 1950s. Our awareness of wire frame drawings because of the use of CAD is much higher, changes in scale are much more readily understood because we have seen so many films whereby objects are magnified very quickly and turned from surfaces into environments. Multi modal and trans-media drawings are common, but older methods of drawing that rely like Morroco's on certain types of shading such as sfumato are probably harder to read because of a lack of exposure to these sorts of images.
She left us with a quote, "There is nothing like anatomy".
Paulo Luís Almeida: The visit - Drawing as Naked Image
This presentation centred around drawings Paulo made of his father during the last years of his father's life as he was dealing with advanced Parkinson's disease. As language became redundant, drawing began to take its place, it became an act of presence, of being there. Paulo stated that both the draughtsman and his father 'arrive at the image at the same time as it is made' and that the drawing become part of a mirrored relationship. Over these final years the same drawings were made of his father, mouth open, often tubes attached to him, an image of growing frailty. In making the image over and over again Paulo began to build up memories in his muscles, memories that recorded the making of the images, which were even more powerful than the images themselves. This research was also becoming a question about how emotion effects the way we draw, and part of this was also how to present to an audience via a lecture format with slides, some sort of equivalent.
As images of the drawings were shown, sometimes they were flipped over or moved by hand across the screen, the images had been videoed rather than photographed and continuous re-placement and movement within the frame of the screen was being used in an attempt to echo some of the initial awkwardness of the situation. I wasn't sure about how effective this was and thought we could have been shown the drawings in more detail, perhaps using more close-ups of the handling technique which would have enabled Paulo to talk more about touch and materials handling and how he thought they were evolving in response to drawing over a long sustained period. The drawings themselves were powerful and a very intimate record of an extremely emotional encounter and I just wanted to see an exhibition of them in the flesh.
Paulo pointed out that knowing and feeling are different and as he did so on screen he was making a drawing of a spiral, as the spiral grew larger it was becoming harder to control the mark making because the hand was having to move from simply rotating from the wrist to using elbow movement. Again this was interesting, but I wanted him to keep the spiral going, so that eventually he would have had to use all his body. Perhaps one day I will make that spiral myself and film what happens as it gets six feet wide. As Paulo stated, 'every mark made is a record of a world response'. He spoke of drawing as a coming together with the world and began to show us a film of a hand unravelling a black thread from a spool.
He was now being 'in the game', taking gestures seriously, this being a concentrated attempt to communicate a line made gestural communication directly through film. We now began to see images of this line being pulled over one of his drawings and it was then tautened as it made a horizontal and then a triangular relationship with the drawn image of his father in bed. I think we were to ask ourselves questions as to whether or not this interrelationship was furthering our emotional engagement with the situation, if so I don't think it helped. What it did do was begin to reveal a sort of choreographic potential of hand, wrist, black thread, spool dance. I was aware of how the framing of these elements; the visual cutting away of the rest of the body was quite dramatic and that this could become a filmed performance, but it would need serious workshopping to realise its full potential.
Paulo spoke of his father's verbal language decline through 16 years of succumbing to the disease and of how drawing had come in as a replacement for talking. Drawing now becoming a sign of caring, a statement about a relationship. The draftsman in this case getting a heightened experience of himself as the other. As Paulo continued to speak I was becoming very aware that his use of English was very poetic; certain phrases were I presumed the result of translation from Portuguese, this was becoming for myself an example of multi-modal communication. I began reflecting on how in most cases this was how communication was effected. The previous presentation on drawing and anatomy failed I felt to fully explore ostensive understandings and yet I'm sure that it is demonstration and pointing to examples that are the most effective communication methods when explaining how to do something. You would do dissections alongside pointing to and referring to both what you were doing and how it would appear in a drawing. Communication of these sorts is nearly always effected by a simultaneous use of body language, verbal language and visual aids, we have though through academic study tended to separate the different elements out. Instead of exploring how they work holistically alongside each other, we tend to look at the situation as if one form of communication can work on its own. We accept blended learning as being a vital way for us to communicate to students, so why shouldn't we have 'blended research'?
As Paulo continued he described his drawings as being suspended in a mirror relationship between father and son and added that every representation is partly to do with a fear of loss. He restated that the memory of our gestures is different to the memory of the images. I then began to think about reading drawings from different distances. Standing close to the surface you become much more absorbed in a gestural and material understanding, but as you step back from a drawing it gradually becomes more of an image. This 'embodied' aspect of how we read images was perhaps being underplayed by the speakers. Paulo was now however moving on to speak about drawings of this sort being a type of 'witness' to a relationship and that these 'naked' images were not about art, but were about testimonies to experience. (An interesting aside comment that didn't really get opened out; I was very aware that some artists say the opposite, if you Google "my art is a testimony to experience" you will get several results. This was a thought that I would return to as I arrived back in Leeds the following evening and stumbled by chance on an exhibition of the drawings of John O' Connor, but more on that later)
Paulo suggested that embodiment was a new term for an old problem, in feeling sympathy for another person's pain, we embody it. When in conversation with someone, they will often mimic our body movements as a form of empathetic understanding and a signalling back to ourselves that they are being very attentive to us as another human being. Embodiment can therefore be a sort of simulation, you can also put yourself into the body of the person that produced a drawing by retracing steps in the making of the drawing through the way you read its marks. Empathy is of course central to all of this and Paulo left us with a quote from Ataman, the full text of which I tried to look up later, but instead found this one, which I thought was just as appropriate:
“I look at people like buildings. instead of walls and rooms, we have stories and experiences. As long as we can live these stories, express these stories, tell and retell these stories, then we can stand up, the way a building stands. talking is the only meaningful activity we have. Once we are no longer willing or allowed to tell our stories, we collapse into conformity.”
—Kutlug Ataman
I would add into that mix that yes we all have stories to tell but sometimes we tell them by re-shaping our bodies, (the skin's story for instance, or the jump of excitement we make when something important happens to us) and at others by making things such as drawings or objects, a silent film can be as powerful as any other, but most of our best stories will have emerged long ago around camp fires at night and will have emerged in communal retelling and reshaping.
Currie Scott: Embodied ways of knowing about self ageing
I had been looking forward to this presentation because of my engagement with 'Life Hacks for a limited Future' a group of older people all working together to think about how to best prepare themselves for the inevitability of facing growing infirmity and death.
Currie Scott had two main areas of
investigation. “Mark making for making meaning” and “Elucidating perceptions of
aging, through participatory drawing. A phenomelogical approach”. She began
her presentation by stressing that this was about non-propositional thinking.
Currie had developed a project whereby she worked with older people on a series of sessions, whereby they all worked on drawing tasks set by Currie.
Her key question was, how can
drawing reveal perceptions of aging? In particular her participants were told
that this was about non-representational drawing. (This issue of
non-representational drawing came up several times during the conference. It
was based on a presumed fact that as some people were not very good at drawing it
would cause such anxiety that they would not participate. Not just when working
with groups such as these older people, but also in conference workshops we
were told that we would not deal with representational drawing because this
created too much anxiety from those who could not draw. I found this deeply
conflicting, because we had already had a presentation about anatomy whereby it
was obvious that only a very skilled drawer could do the required drawings if a
clear communication was to be made. It felt to me that these types of drawing
sessions were always going to be conflicted because it was as if we had to make
something with one hand tied behind our backs. I feel that even if you can’t
draw something very well, at least in the attempt you can usually communicate
something about the thing you are trying to represent.)
5 drawing types were
introduced to the participating people, who were all over 60. These drawing
approaches include “drawing in the air” (gestural) as well as on paper. People
made collages, life lines and mark making about how things felt, as well as
moving their bodies as a sort of choreographed gestural drawing of aging. At
times Curie was struggling to find a research process that worked with what she
was doing, however she solved this when she became aware of non-dualist
ontology, an approach that allowed you to deal with both subjective and
objective experiences at the same time. In order to do this she would use
multi-media approaches to information gathering; drawings, data sets, film, audio recordings and
reflection.
Three sorts of drawings were
identified as central to the outcome space for this research. ‘Habitual’ or
‘patterned’ which seemed to be mainly people drawing using pictograms.
‘Embodied’ drawing, which appeared to be in this case mainly centred on ‘in air’
or gestural drawing and ‘expressive’ drawing, centred on markmaking or a
communal experience exploring perception. On top of these approaches she
introduced ‘transformational’ drawing, drawing that when coupled with other
perceptions allowed for future possibilities to be envisioned. She wanted her
participants to engage with ‘playful surrender’, so that they became lost in
time, and could therefore more intuitively be able to ‘navigate the terrain of
future aging’.
When examining the
relationship between air
drawing and meaning, it was interesting to me that Curie used the phrase
‘gestures dissolve into tacit or implicit knowing’. I think this is related to
Eisner’s statement that, “our sensibilities are also employed in the construction
of our consciousness”, but I missed the citation. (See Eisner’s article: ‘The
Arts and the Creation of Mind’) She had also looked at Johnson and Lakoff and
the body and metaphor. We were therefore asked to think about the metaphors we
use when speaking about old age. For example, “time is catching up with us” or
“our bodies begin to let us down”, suggestions that in some way we are failing. This was part of the
reason for undertaking the project, because the preconceptions we all have
about aging need to be confronted and re-examined, so that we can see the
positive aspects of aging. I was at times struggling to keep up with my notetaking, so was very aware of my own issues with aging, and have plenty metaphors of my own; 'Am I slowing down?' 'Am I not what I was?' 'Am I nearing the end of the line?'
It was interesting to see the
body movement metaphors that people would make in their air drawings, typically
people would make cutting movements as if they were trying to cut their way out
of dense undergrowth.
There were several things
that I wanted to open out in relation to this very important presentation. The
first was to see if there was any room for a parallel piece of research, this
time using professional illustrators/artists who were used to trying to
communicate to other people very subtle issues. For instance one of my MA
students last year made a study of the use of tonal value, colour and textural filters in
Photoshop and Illustrator when making drawings about people and technology. He
had found himself beginning to specialise in illustrations that demanded
explaining technological advances and changes to the general public. This meant
that he often found himself having to deal with on the one hand technical
precision but on the other a look or feel that was non-threatening and user
friendly. Mood and clarity of information were at times at odds with each
other, therefore a very sophisticated blend between two approaches was
sometimes required. His research involved having to go back to Renaissance terms for ways of dealing with tone, he compared these various ways of dealing with light and emotional value, with lighting used in
film-making and then finally tested his findings out by applying what was learnt to actual projects. (The link takes you to one of the jobs he undertook whilst doing the research)
I was also personally
interested in seeing if there was any way I could get involved in extending my
work with the ‘Life Hacks for a limited future’ group and seeing if some of the
activities introduced in Bournemouth would work with a similar age group in
Leeds. I would also like to revisit the non-representational issue and see what
would happen if people began to try and represent very specific aging issues as representational images. Issues
such as textural precision, linear values, tonal mood etc. might be addressed
alongside more diagrammatic formats, perhaps looking at graphic artists such as
Chris Ware or Richard McGuire as models for simplifying complex representations, but also looking at a more visually poetic approach, something I'm very interested in personally.
Amanda Roberts: Life
drawing as female centric practice
This presentation was an
exploration of a woman artist and female models working together to
develop a way of establishing female identity through a life drawing
practice. The history of life drawing it was argued was a socially formed male dominated practice,
which has historically been dissociated from experiential understandings
and the equal involvement of both artist and model practitioners. Embodied and mediated drawing was presented
as a strategy that positions the researcher as an active participant in her
investigation rather than being passively situated in discursive practices.
There was reference to gendered mark making and a project centred on
negotiation. However I wasn’t clear as to how the negotiation was working. What
were the decisions made by the various models used and what were the ones made
by the artist? The artist said that she had become good friends with one of the models, but although this demonstrated an equality in terms of their personal relationship, it didn't help explain how the visualisation of someone's body could be a joint venture. I began to imagine various situations whereby the artist would
constantly seek feedback from the model as to how the drawing was progressing,
almost in a client/designer exchange, even to the extend of perhaps employing a
client manager, who could work as an intermediary and help clarify what worked
as a communication and what didn’t. Amanda’s drawings were large, made on
several sheets of A1 paper and she used charcoal in a gestural manner,
typical of that used in many life drawing situations. These drawings as they
were put together often moved between the floor and the wall, giving them a
certain physical or three-dimensional presence, the reasons for the placement obviously came from the situation, but I must have missed the explanation, I was sitting quite far back and at times found it hard to hear. I would have liked to have seen
some drawings ‘in the flesh’ so that I could understand whether or not various exchanges between artist and model
had either changed gestural mark application or if there were changes in attention to certain details due to changes in the negotiated relationship. I also wondered if the relationship had at anytime
being recorded in text, by for instance writing on some parts of the drawing what was said as the drawer
and drawn began sorting out their relationship. This raised several questions
for me and I began to wonder if I could explore these issues as a man? For many
years Nina now Jared Kane has explored similar issues and I think in ways more
open to audience engagement. Amanda's presentation, like so many conference presentations, made me very aware of how poor lecture/presentation communication methods are. I wanted to be there while she was making the drawings, perhaps some sort of VR experience would be able to give me that experience, but how would this help me realise what was going on in the model's head at the time? Conferences are about communication and although I had a brief conversation with Amanda afterwards it was in no way long enough to unpick some of the issues I was thinking about.
Carol Lévesque: Drawing stories of a walk
Carol is an architect and this presentation stemmed from her investigation of how to construct drawings that illustrated the 'grain' or visual 'texture' of an experience of walking for six days through the island of Montreal. In particular she was interested in those 'non spaces' that we tend to overlook. She began by suggesting that, "Walking is a space of enunciation", it connects people and places together. By this I presumed she meant that walking in some way informs and at the same time presents the information in a declarative manner. As she put it, 'walking allows for an inscription of the body within the city'. She reminded us of the architect's plan view, a view from above, (God's eye view) and how a line instead of being the edge of a shape, can also be a line of meaning. For any inhabitant of a particular space, knowledge is developed along their line of movement. What was interesting for me was that I have a practice that often involves walking the streets and drawing and talking to people. This produces more than one type of drawn response, and Carol was suggesting that we have in this case architects plan type thinking meeting the line of experience. She was also taking photographs, and like David Hockney's these were overlapping shots that attempted to describe the time of looking, or give more experiential weight to the photographic record.
Carol collected various data from the walk, (actual plant types, written information on flora and fauna encountered, making films, note taking, etc etc) and certain decisions were made as to where the six points along the route which would determine the focusing of data would be. These points of focus were then used as clusters for diagrams made from the data collected.
Day one data collection drawing
At this point because I have worked both as a designer and as an artist I was aware of the differences in using CAD and freehand drawing when dealing with spatial understanding. She was putting together map type references and then these were tilted into what looked like isometric planes, this allowed for a technical drawing led visualisation of the non spaces; spaces because they were so empty, that often had stabilising points of visual interest in the form of electricity pylons. (I found myself reflecting on the meaning of the word 'pylon', which is the old name for an ancient gateway and that it has a mythical significance far beyond its very important task of carrying electricity cables). Finally one drawing was made from each day, this drawing was a composite of as much information as possible and as the walk took six days, Carol made six composite drawings.
Technical diagram of non space
Final drawing
The final drawings were very two dimensional, it was as if all the information had been squashed into a flatland. Each drawing was very complex, often taking over 100 hours to draw using technical drawing pens. People looking at the drawings have a very different experience to the maker, but interestingly they apparently could develop a form of empathetic understanding of these spaces by careful, slow looking at the dense and complex information encoded within them. This slowing down of the looking was particularly important to my own thoughts about why we draw and it was useful to reflect on how an initial very physical experience, (walking / embodied understanding) could be conceptually reframed, (data collection / diagramming) and rebuilt into a different form. (A complex pen and ink drawing).
A finished drawing
This was the last presentation of the day, the afternoon was devoted to workshops, and I chose one held by Andrew Hall, Birgitta Hosea and Maryclare Foá. I was very interested in the individual presenter's various approaches as the workshop, all three being interesting drawing practitioners. It was a relief to be involved in making drawings for an afternoon, these large drawings involving approaches to mindfulness, embodied markmaking, collaborative engagement and personal mark making. As with most of these sessions the most interesting aspect is watching a group of grown ups engage in childlike play. (Note childlike, not childish)
Notes from previous DRN conferences
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