Category: Constellation Year 2 (Erasmus; Cardiff Met)

Guest Speaker Paul Granjon

Paul Granjon is a tutor at Cardiff Met who makes artwork involving ‘Co-evolution of humans and machines, robots in performance, home manufacturing, role of electronic arts within humanities and science and technology studies.’ He came to give us a talk about his projects and practice.

I found this quite engaging as I am interested in the part technology plays in society today.  Granjon picks apart how society interacts with technology and makes comment on it by literally taking apart bits of everyday technology and reassembling them, creating robots, media installations and performance pieces it in order to make a statements on the relationship we have with technology today and what those relationships may be in the future.

In his talk, Granjon raised the idea of the ‘amputation’ from humanity and human processes technology can bring, giving the example of how today, we store all our phone numbers remotely  in our phone whereas 20 years ago we would memorize the numbers. This is an amputation or transferal of human memory usage to technology.

He also talked about the amputation and sanitation of the physical world or organisms due to digitization. A piece he made dealing with this is Forest Automative which was in response to the restricted access to the countryside during the the foot and mouth crisis in 2001. He created a sanitized forest within the gallery space where viewers could sit and hear forest noises, experiencing the sounds and visuals of the countryside in a safe clean environment.

What really struck me about his work is how he invites the viewer to engage in serious ideas about use of technology through humour, pastiche and poking fun at our attitudes to it  and his creation of funny machines with which we can interact. This element of fun is what draws the viewer in and what makes his work and his messages memorable.

Here are some links to his websites

Earlier Machines

New Website

Source of Quoted Text  Cardiff Metropolitan School of Art website, Staff, Paul Granjon, Current Research.  – Here, links to academic papers he has written on robots can be found. I would like to take a look at these in the future. These are in the Cardiff met D-Space repository.

Readings on drawing as a means of thought/ cognition. Ideational Drawing

Today I have been reading New Beginnings and Monstrous Births by Terry Rosenberg in the book Writing on Drawing (2008). It was a very wordy read. This text deals with ideational drawing.

It referenced many established theorists such as; Heidiger, Michel Serres, Rajchman, Deleuse.

It also threw up some new words for me;

asceticism, educes, ap-prehension, prehension.

So, things that grabbed me in this text was the suggestion of the innumerate possibilities in the creative process when drawing, comprising of the culmination of;  ‘the known’, ‘the unkown’, ‘the not yet known’ and  ‘the un-knowable’. In this case, in Ideational drawing, what is known contributes to the unknown.. this discussion offers up a nice simile

‘ They operate on one another in much the same way as the sea and land operate on each other- the sea (unknowing) constantly redrafts the shape of the shore’

This theorisation informed by Rajchman’s ‘Impossible Architecture’ could be linked to Julia Watson’s suggestions of Bobby Baker’s Diary drawings as a prosthesis for reviewing the self and awareness of the self where these drawings were a means for Baker to monitor her psychosis. I need to read that part again…

this is the Key connecting bit

‘ In an ideational drawing one tries to release from grasp what one knows, review what is to e known,…in order to produce an (ap)prehension of what is still to be concieved in, and as, a yet unknown future’

It could be questioned whether, Baker”s diary drawings are ideational drawings though. I am not so sure anymore.

another was that the act of drawing in its self is a method of critical thinking when depicting an object, it is a way of questioning the objects fiber or reality or ‘ isness’, of what it is.

Like in the process of making paper, drawing an object is like reaching a hand into a vat of pulp and agitating the fibers, dispersing them upwards to settle on the frame to be formed as a new sheet of paper. Hah, I am picking up on the style of speak of this text!

Reference: 

GARNERS. 2008. Writing on Drawing;Essays on Drawing Practice and Research. Bristol: Bristol : Intellect.

The Sick of the Fringe Festival

I just discovered this festival on the Wellcome Gallery website in Past exhibitions.

It brings art, science and medicine together in art exhibitions and performance ranging through theater, comedy and performance art pieces to explore the attitudes towards Illness and disability in society.

I am very sad I missed this, it was on in February. PDF iconThe Sick of the Fringe brochure (3.7 MB) line up looked great. The participation work ‘Nurse knows Best’ by Sheila Ghelani would have been interesting to experience.

 

Bobby Baker Drawings

Been Reading this book. It’s got some essays on Baker’s Mental Health Drawings  and images of the drawings made over the space of 11 years as well as personal notes from Baker herself.

20170314_162037Reflections on the essay’Chronicles of a life repaired’ by Marina Warner.

The drawings have an immediacy  that convey what she is feeling . She draws in the moment with no foresight of the future. Diary entries/drawings allow experiences to be revisited to how they felt  ‘in real time’ with out the alteration that hindsight tends to elicit on an event. There is an element of ‘unkowablity’ (Warner) in them, they are of the moment with now idea of how the future will unfold.

The exhibition of the images are emotive, they draw the viewer in and bring them on a journey. The viewer empathises with Baker’s drawings and experience relief as the drawings at the end of the series evidence her success in overcoming  her awful torments of cancer and mental illness showing the way to recovery.

Questions:

What makes these drawings so emotive?

What makes them so engaging to the viewer? Warner speaks of the viewers acting in a different manner to those at other exhibitions. They stand together holding their breath as they view the drawings rooting for Baker, experiencing her traumas.

What makes these drawings different? Is it the change in attitudes in the value of drawings themselves?

Thought :

Her drawings are quite literal visualisations of how she feels, Baker says it how it feels with no artistic veneer of obscurity. They are direct. They are for her benefit but tell a story of experience accessible at a universal level.

Wabi-Sabi

This Japanese philosophy came up in our group tutorial for Constellation and I feel looking into it a bit could help inform some of my thinking for subject and it could feed into my writings for the dissertation proposal.

This is a short synopsis of Wabi-Sabin photographed from the book ‘ The Beauty of Craft’. ( Sandy Brown and Maya Kumar, 2004)

Dissertation Research: Bobby Baker

Within my dissertation, I would like to explore the beneficial qualities of drawings and possibilities in communication that drawing hold.

I would like to reference and analyse the Mental Health Drawings of Bobby Baker to address the healing potential of drawing and it’s use in embodiment of personal challenges and experiences.

bobbybakerdiarydrawings_650x256
Mental Health Drawings, Bobby Baker. Watercolours, pen and pencil.

Source: https://wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions/bobby-bakers-diary-drawings DOA 26/02/2017

This interview below gives an idea of Baker’s work and practice, as well as how keeping a visual diary aided her recovery from mental illness. You get a sense of her wonderful humour and personality that comes through her performative work too. I really admire this woman.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2010/may/12/art-mental-illness