One of the ways that drawing can be used to think about concepts is in
relation to how language has meaning and how this meaning relates to
things in the world about which we talk. In our thinking about drawing
we need to find a place for everything from diagrams conveying
information in a disambiguated and systematised way, more informal
diagrams ambiguous and using an improvised notation, working drawings
that are part of a creative process where the aim is not to convey
information but to think through a problem, Drawing that relates to
purely subjective states of mind, drawing from observation of some
worldly thing, drawing as communion with rather than communication
about the world, and so on. In much thinking about language there is
only one distinction usually made namely that: language is a
conventional system of signs used to convey information about the
world. Words are supposed to hook up to objects in the world or to
abstract properties of those objects and allow us in coded form to talk
about things in the world and our relations with one another. It is my
contention that this view of language - though I am caricaturing it
here - is completely wrong about this core assumption. Were such a
language possible then it would be completely incapable of performing a
role for thinking since creatively.
While at least some drawing is a form of externalised thinking through
mark making we can still only think about thinking -whether verbal or
graphic - in verbal terms. Such verbal thinking about graphic thinking
often accompanies the act of drawing itself. One reason why we can use
drawing to think about concepts is that, as the object of our verbal
thinking about thinking, it provides a way of distinguishing between
this verbal thinking about thinking from the graphic thought process
that is the object of analysis. The trouble is that the standard view
of language as 'coded signification' then steps in to sidetrack us into
false distinctions in our thinking about drawing as thinking.
This is why I think that we need to analyse language from the
standpoint of drawing and not the other way round since the false idea
of language always gets us in a muddle.
Martin
On 7 Sep 2006, at 18:00, ana leonor rodrigues wrote:
> Angela and all
> Yes, I would say that there is a precision in drawing that does not
> have to be logic or coded, but it is precise anyway.
> It is the precision of my visual experience, for example, or the kind
> of precision/choices made, when drawing, so well described in the
> quotation Steve presented .
> In a drawing we can be the mad driver, without killing or getting
> killed in accident.
>
> The problem of the code, to me, is that it may establish a line
> between what is drawing and what is some kind of language (I know that
> the word language will probably get reactions).
> a language exists at the moment we have a coded signification, where
> certain sensible elements mean, regularly, something. A system of
> signs , a group of perceptible facts that serve to intencionaly and
> conventionally evoke, in a fixed way, contents of thought to
> communicate.
>
> The examples of "thinking drawing" of architects are sometimes very
> interesting, because they tend to be persons that use with
> ease several codes in drawing.
>
> When they are inventing we may see drawings that begin to be coded
> images, that suddenly take wings (they became thje mad driver) and
> become a drawing (in my way of thinking about drawing), the code
> is broken by a different kind of more personal and opened register.
> These kind of drawings are to me interesting, because they are very
> near of the thinking mind.
> They contain enormous amount of information of the kind that is needed
> to drive without accidents, they transmit architectonic (or designing)
> ideas, they also transmit feeligs and visual chalenges and, as
> someone said before here in this conversation, they are frequently
> beautiful, even if they where made to help the thinking/creative mind
> at that moment.
>
> Well I fear the text is getting to long so I'll wait for your "voices".
> Ana Leonor
>
>
>
>
> --
> Ana Leonor M. Madeira Rodrigues
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