Technologies of Drawing Conference

A break from the reading group posts but this seems an appropriate place to share the notes taken at the recent Huddersfield conference on drawing technologies.

Technologies of Drawing Conference 26. 8. 2011

Notes:

Deanna Petherbridge:
Idea, pragmatics and critique: Drawing as empowering and interactive practice.
A presentation that focused on ‘inventing, making, siting and the reception of art’.
Deanna returned to the old painting v sculpture debate in order to shed light on the way different materials effect the way we can carry content. (Media specificity).
Touch and sight, the hierarchy of the senses.
The supremacy of sight was often cited during the Renaissance. Drawing was used by all professions, these multifarious practitioners, painters, sculptors, architects etc. often being the same person, (sic) Michelangelo. The common thread that links these professions together is drawing.
Narrative veracity. Issues surrounding narrative veracity in relation to sculpture and painting were highlighted using a comparison between Bernini and the Carracci brothers.
Annibale Carracci in particular had pioneered a synthesis of the traditionally opposed Renaissance concepts of disegno ("drawing") and colore ("colour"). The plasticity of the central Italian tradition is wedded to the Venetian colour tradition and this is seen at its optimum in the decoration of the vault of the gallery in the Palazzo Farnese, Rome (1597-1604). However the Carracci brothers also play with the idea of illusion and ‘grisaille’. Grisaille (painting in grey monotone) in particular plays off against the limitations of sculpture, highlighting its lack of colour. There are many levels of representation here, paint pretending to be architecture, sculpture, flesh etc.
N.b. Annibale’s preparatory drawings for the ceiling are a lesson I can use when composing contemporary history images.
It was pointed out that modern work can be read in the same way, Picasso’s Guernica has drawings exploring emotional impact as studies for the final painting, this parallels Carracci’s studies of how to draw a foreshortened leg. All these artists use worked up studies and doodles and try out ideas in drawing. It was pointed out that all these drawing activities are still vital, working through roughs, playing with initial ideas, doing technical drawing to clarify the situation, making more detailed drawings to illustrate ideas to clients etc.
These are making and thinking 2D art works. The study of sculpture as a thinking device is harder because unlike drawing not all the stages are recorded. (In drawing if you look closely you can always see rubbings out, reinforcement of one mark over another etc.) This is similar to looking at computer drawings, as all stages are deleted. (However I was aware of the Z key, the software remembers) However Deanna wanted to emphasise the fact that drawing reveals the stages of its own process, therefore was deeply implicated in the personal narrative of making and thinking. We are aware of the authorial hand of the artist, but can we remove our awareness of this when trying to engage with the meaning or communication made by any particular artwork?
In sculpture we need to take on a higher level of imaginative will in order to believe that stone represents flesh or soft cloth. In the case of a more contemporary artist (Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space was shown in this case) we are asked to accept that polished cast metal can be seen as a metaphor for speed and energy. We need to ‘suspend disbelief’ in response to the clarity and ‘insistence’ of signs available to us. This is still the case when an artist uses ‘real’ materials, such as in installation art.
Drawing as witness and recording.
The act of drawing allows us to re-use our perceptions. A line is always a concept, an abstraction.
Van Heemskerk’s drawing of a sculpture courtyard was now used to illustrate how sculpture was collected and presented in the 16th century and to make a point about how sculpture was conceptualised within drawing.
Bernini’s drawings and the way they use light and touch were used to illustrate the sculptor’s approach to an understanding of drawing as a tool. His tactile drawings feel as if they are almost sculptures, marks ‘feeling’ for the form. In particular his chalk study for the fountain of Neptune, 1652, which was contrasted to his pen, ink and wash drawing of the same subject.

The presentation now moved onto a different tack. The importance of worked through concepts that used drawing as a thinking tool was highlighted and compared to the use of ‘found and readymade’ images within contemporary practice. Baudrillard’s use of the term ‘simulcra’ was now used as a way of defining levels of representation.
When using ‘real’ objects representation starts from the principle that the sign and the real are of equal value. However in a culture suffused with images (such as our own), the real can sometimes be confused with that which has already been reproduced. (We need to see it on TV to believe it exists) The potency of these images it was claimed, partly created the recent London riots. People enacting the roles of rioters because of the potency of riot images they had already seen. Therefore images of riots stimulate riots. The adoption of these images is hard to track, but in some ways the ‘real’ (the riots) is in fact a simulacra, as these actions are actually mimicking earlier news footage, which presented very powerful images to a lot of people that had no other comparable images to model themselves on.
So what has this to do with drawing? Petherbridge proposes a split in sensibility between art that creates constructed metaphors and artists using existing situations (found objects etc.) as concepts. She uses a compare and contrast method (perhaps she is an ex Courtauld Institute graduate) to illustrate her point, citing Hirst’s ‘Pharmacy’ and Richard Wilson’s ‘20:50’. She points out that Wilson’s work creates phenomena and is (sic) ‘a real experience’ rather than a simulacra. Wilson’s work, ‘Watertable’ she describes as, ‘uncanny, profound and disruptive’. “The hand of the artist is apparent”. She muses on the fact that Wilson must draw.
In the non metaphorical space of the simulacra, drawing however has for Petherbridge a problematic relationship.
If art has to do with ‘acts of transformation’ (she tells a joke about 2 peas placed on the studio floor as a representation of life) what is the conceptual apparatus that triggers this? In the past metaphor was the key, but it now appears as if this is no longer viable. (Questionable) In the non metaphorical space of the simulacra drawing now has a problematic position. The hand of the maker/auteur (authorship) is now diminished in favour of the onlooker. As simulacra, artworks therefore have to be signposted for spectators. (DP cites Hirst and Mike Nelson). I.e. if not you can’t see the difference between art and what is not art) This ‘conceptual’ act is however not one of abstraction and it is abstraction that allows us to see and think about the world. We need abstraction as a focus to cut through the infinite complexity of reality.
Because drawing employs line it uses something outside of nature (this is the moment of abstraction) and is conceptual but in a metaphorical domain. It’s critical role allows for better solutions to be sought and found and for the drawing thinker to go off on tangents as images arrive within the process of drawing. Drawing has a complete relationship to an extended practice, and should be understood as a tool for abstract conceptual thinking.
Finally Susanna Heron’s work was looked at, Heron uses both old and new technologies in her drawing/sculptural practice.

David Dernie: Material Drawings
The Greeks had always linked ‘teche’ (often translated as craftsmanship but also a word for art) to ‘poiesis’to make, poïetic work reconciles thought with matter and time. This points to an interdependence with what we do/say and how we do it. (The specificity of technology) At the core of this thinking is content and how it is carried by different media.
Architectural drawing has a long history, initiated with activities concerning with measuring the ground and developing bounded spaces ordered within timed perimeters. In this instance we can see technique (chalk lines etc.) making the world visible.
Drawing as a way of separating one bit of the world from another simply by drawing a line around something.
The relationship between the technologies and the content that runs through them was expressed by the difference in situated-ness. Content comes from the fact that human beings are situated in the world, the computer or any other tool is not situated, (aware of what is going on) it is simply a carrier.
Hand-made drawing was described as non-mediated (having direct contact hand/eye/brain with perception), computer drawing was described as mediated.
The second stage (after boundary drawing) is predicative/planning. A street plan for example. However this cannot contain the ‘life’ of the street. Therefore how does a specific ‘human’ reader of a plan understand it? How do they deal with the levels of abstraction?
Perception was then examined in terms of the ‘screen’ and the different ways that the mind engages with the conditions of mediation. (Cinema screen, phone screen, computer etc.)
Computer generated images bring a formal imagination to the fore because 3D generative software programmes rely on basic geometric shapes to build complex solids. However this limits materials imagination and certain types of spatial thinking outside of perspective projections. In particular the formal codes now in place within architectural rendering software (glass, stone etc.) are leading to particularly insensitive design approaches. There is no longer any space for material thinking/play within many areas of contemporary design practice. Instead we have an iconography of materials which are becoming the norm.
Where did the implications of Cubism go? Multi viewpoint, viewer engagement and synchronistic vision, now forgotten. We need to bring back a more complex understanding of situational understanding of space. Not just one, two and three point perspectives.
The work of the installation artist and photographer Georges Rousse was looked at because it asks questions as to our ‘situatedness’ in relation to architectural space. The work seen was in fact similar to images used to develop LCA Foundation Art and Design curriculum during the 1980s. A welcome reminder of his work, in particular photographs taken of painted forms that appear to be squares but are in fact lots of different bits of colour applied to surfaces that when seen at one exact point, suddenly appear to be a flat coherent square.
Berthold Brecht stage designer Caspar Neher was cited as an important influence of situatedness. His work on breaking the forth wall conventions and ‘enframing relationships in respect to the drama of events’ was seen as very important to the way we might be able to re-envisage architectural drawing.

Teresa Carneiro:
The indisciplinarity of drawing – drawing spaces
An introduction to the work of the Lisbon based Drawing Spaces.
Teresa spoke about the work of 8 different practitioner projects held within Drawing Spaces. She detailed the different approaches artists had taken. For more details see: http://drawingspacesen.weebly.com/index.html
Central to many of the approaches is an acceptance of a phenomenological approach to drawing, this was questioned by the chair, who it appeared, hadn’t any awareness of the issues involved.
The space operates as a dynamic research arena and could be a useful place for the LCA to make links with. In particular the space provides a context for thinking through the pedagogic implications of drawing within contemporary art practice.

Brass Art:
Pinning it Down: Drawing as capture
A discussion of both digital and analogue drawing in relation to themes of practice. Brass Art is a collaborative project between HE institution staff (Chara Lewis, Kristin Mojsiewicz and Anneke Pettican) See: http://www.brassart.org.uk/about.php?focus=exhib&im=1&tm=about
Brass Art are concerned with the liminal. (Spaces between things and at the entrances and exits) The double and the shadow are current themes. Representation itself being a form of doubling.
The most interesting part of this presentation was the implications of White Light Projection Technology. Used extensively for human body measurement it is based on the projection of light patterns. This has allowed them to use body scanners as image making tools and more recent developments have seen the use of Wiii 3 entertainment system technology as a crude recording device. The use of this easily available technology, (reverse engineered Wiii system) to record 3D movement, has a lot of implications of future drawing thinking within both the games industry and other visual imagery using professions.
The importance of data points and the evolution of images using directed line technology was compared to ‘Man with a Movie Camera’ an experimental 1929 silent documentary film, with no story and no actors by director Dziga Vertov, and edited by his wife Elizaveta Svilova.
In the film Soviet citizens are shown at work and at play interacting with the machinery of modern life. To the extent that the film can be said to have "characters," they are the cameramen of the title and the film editor. (Brass Art show a slide of Svilova editing) This film is famous for the range of cinematic techniques Vertov invents, deploys or develops, such as double exposure, fast motion, slow motion, freeze frames, jump cuts, split screens, oblique angles, extreme close-ups, tracking shots, footage played backwards, stop motion animations a totally self-reflexive film.
Brass Art point to the fact that new digitally centred art forms can also be self reflective in this way, media specificity being at the centre of this thinking.

Finally we had a visit to Huddersfield Art Gallery and Deborah Gardner gave a talk on her sculpture and how it responded to selected work within the gallery collection.