Doesn't it depend on what you are- drawing? GPS seems very relevant if you are looking at movement and time
There are lots of times my drawing thinking has been shifted forward by changing media- or drawing between 2and 3 dimensions and by drawing materially then digitally- the different mediums and spaces enable different shifts and speeds of thinking- which I find useful

Trish Bould

Winchester School of Art
University of Southampton
Park Avenue
Winchester
SO23 8DL

Tel 02380 596952

-----Original Message-----
From: The UK drawing research network mailing list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Rachel & Spike
Sent: 22 November 2008 14:17
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Fwd: why has there been a swing back to drawing?

knox-williams c. (ckw1v07) wrote:
> Hello,
> Please see thoughts below.  I hope you do not mind my adding in at various points in the previous message.
> Best -
> Charlotte
> ________________________________________
>
> (Might searching and finding takes place both through digital and analogue means -  I am thinking of mapping and locating in terms of places as well as information) - but it also leaves
> its traces of definition and correction(Again, this also occurs in digital media - History in photoshop, show changes in word, cookies on the internet to name just a few examples) and screams nuance. (Arguably the examples that I have given are also subtle, complex and shifting)
>
>
>
Hello again, I hope you don't mind but i needed to reply to Charlotte.

I have been thinking about this very issue in regards to conditioning
and freedom. The example which has remained with me the longest is a
drawing performed with a G.P.S. and by walking through a city. The
resultant work is a plotted map i suppose of the movement of the person
being tracked.

My first thought was, what a waste! Imagine being placed in a city you
have never been in and given X hours to walk around it. Of all the
sights, sounds, tastes, feelings, suprises etc you could experience, how
does this (X0, Y0) - (X0.5, Y1) graph compare? Are Sat Nav's the next
development in our Gallery experiences within which we would be told to
set off from the left eye of Valesquez and move 10cm right and 12cm down
to where we will find 'x'?

Then there's the issue of the fabric of the city itself, drawing is
typically two dimensional but can render a three dimensional experience.
This typical map is restricted to a plan view. The options available to
the walker, for example they could not walk through a wall or off the
side of a bridge, are restricted so again we would view the resultant
drawing in ignorance to whimsy or constriction.

The very 'history' of the event, the experiences lived by the person
making the journey, are not only lost, but worse, ignored to a
technological use of science merely for the use of science.
Re-production conditions production. When we view a poster for a shampoo
for example, we do not have access to the history of the photoshop
development. However within a painting and a drawing the very first
marks which ripple the entire plain of the canvas/paper are still there
remaining but emphasised or rescinded through the development of the
piece. They are established within the history of the piece.

The subtle shifts within the technological examples are merely
reductionist to smaller and smaller numbers
[ (X0, Y0) {(x0.25, y0.64) - (x0.48, y0.89)} - (X0.5, Y1) ]

Like the walker, the inhuman walls within which we place ourselves
condition our movement to that environment. We can move beyond this
restriction but not by restricting ourselves further and believing the
'whiteness' available through a TV/PC monitor is comparable to the vast
experience of embodiment within a life-world.

Cheesey perhaps but 'You think that's air you are breathing?'
> ________________________________________
> From: The UK drawing research network mailing list [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Rachel & Spike [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2008 12:13 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Fwd: why has there been a swing back to drawing?
>
> Hello Becky, my own naive and hopeful view is that drawing places us in
> connection with ourselves fully, here in the life-world.
>
> Instead of the virtual distance we don't necessarily 'experience' but
> co-join in absence (that very technology that refines through developed
> 'etch-a-sketch'-ese within which we do not develop ourselves but follow
> a doctrined path), we actualise a freedom of thought through embodied
> mark making.
>
> This is very much Jean Baudrillard i realise but i feel it's true and
> more important now than ever.
>
> Glamour is too easy for those of intellect who have some experience. Any
> basic novice could take a photograph of someone real and through a few
> easy steps, refine it on photoshop to make it appear glamourous and
> fitting that thin veil called 'beautiful'. The inhuman brush of media
> can clean away blemishes, brighten the eyes, enhance and richen colour,
> lift eye lids, over-define lashes, balance or make more symmetrical, etc
> etc. Is this what we strive for through art?
>
> I think drawing cuts back on gloss of media glamour, it defines human
> reaction and modification - searching and finding - but it also leaves
> its traces of definition and correction and screams nuance. Drawing is a
> language which utilises pressure as well as arc of elbow, turn of wrist
> etc. Graphically, before a real drawing, we can intuit feeling and
> passion, this is the very language which is bleached away on a computer
> screen. This is the very thing which eludes today's multi media
> 'perfected/corrected' images, depth itself, human contact of emotion,
> experience and presence.
>
> The computer is for me nothing but the whiteness of the paper i wish to
> destroy with the placing of a presence there. A scan of one brush mark
> does not convey the essence of that brushstroke, it conveys an
> appearance which is registered by a machine and translated into a
> separate language of 0's and 1's and thereore diminished. Like
> converting Shakespeare's language into Telly Tubby language. We don't
> feel the flow of the medium or the tease of the brush, we can pick up on
> the groove created in the paper by the force of the pencil.
>
> If you excuse the lewdness, i guess it's the same as the difference
> between having real sex and looking at porn.
>
> :)
>
> Just a luddite opinion.
>
> Spike.
>