Published in TRACEY | journal Drawing Knowledge August 2013 Drawing and Visualisation Research DRAWING ON THE PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE OF FORM – AN INVESTIGATION OF PERCEPTION, IDEATION AND PRACTICE. Alex Ashton a University of Cumbria Alex.Ashton@Cumbria.ac.uk a The concrete and the imaginary are explored, within the paper, as interconnected ways of orientating knowledge that contribute to a multifaceted understanding of experience. It is proposed that drawing, as knowledge and experience, is a particular way of coming to know the world that is explicated within personal experience and practice. What is the relationship between perceptual experience and its reinterpretation through drawing? A methodology is established through constituting the reflexive analysis of observation, ideation and drawing activity within different methods of working: drawing in the landscape, working in the studio, photography and animation. Investigating practice The research process has led to an identification of form as an orientational perception. The articulation of form conjoins experience, memory and imagination in evolving multi-faceted understandings. The research process informs the development of personal drawing practice in articulating the ontological metaphors of space, place and time. The challenges to personal practice, through investigating perception and ideation, are explored within the context of the phenomenological parallels witnessed in the author’s practice-based research. www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ sota/tracey/ tracey@lboro.ac.uk Special Edition developed from selected papers at the 2012 DRN conference at Loughborough University TRACEY | journal: Drawing Knowledge 2013 THE CONCRETE AND THE IMAGINARY ‘When we do not have the words to say something, drawing can define both the real and unreal in visual terms’. (Kovats, 2007:8). As the boundaries of art practice shift and alter the paper aims to investigate drawing as way of revealing knowledge and experience. Underpinning the investigation is an engagement with philosophy in attempting to understand the complexities and interconnections of mind and body, ideation and practice. The experience of the individual is pivotal to the production of a relational knowledge which, it is proposed, is revealed through the process of making. The research does not attempt to define any one technique or skill ‘as drawing’ but instead considers what it is that drawing reveals/discovers/visualizes. As the boundaries dissolve, through the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary practice, we are at an intersection where both everything and nothing can be drawing, but what is it that is sought and how does it manifest itself within practice? Drawing, as a process of mediation, offers opportunities to consider how it describes and interprets experience. ‘Experience’ itself denotes an awareness or consciousness; drawing conjoins the act of drawing itself alongside a consciousness of what is being drawn. Immersion ‘in the world’ (Heidegger, 1962) locates us and begins to construct a conception of space both internally and externally. In investigating the concrete and the imaginary as interconnected ways of orientating knowledge they contribute to a multifaceted understanding of experience, temporality and space. Through constituting and explicating the reflexive analysis of observation, ideation and drawing activity, different methods of working are examined: drawing in the landscape, working in the studio, photography and animation. The paper examines personal drawing practice as it moves between situ and studio, attempting disclose the relationship between experience and its interpretation through the process of drawing. The research originates in drawings executed in the landscape and the studio, in conjunction with the writings in a personal journal, in exploring the space between the real and the unreal, the concrete and the imaginary. PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWPOINTS Huebler acknowledges the process of engagement with the world, a priori to the consciousness of experience, through an explication of art: …as an activity that extends human consciousness through constructs that transpose natural phenomena from that qualitatively undifferentiated condition that we call 'life' into objective and internally focused concepts… (Huebler, 1992:173) 1 TRACEY | journal: Drawing Knowledge 2013 Heubler's conception offers a phenomenological paradigm within which the ‘lived experience’ (Husserl in Moran 2005: Dilthey, 1985, 2010) can be orientated through a mediated interpretation, drawing, conjoining experience, memory and imagination. Phenomenology’s primary concern is with the making of the structures of consciousness, the phenomena that appear in acts of consciousness, as objects of systematic reflection and analysis; in constituting or giving meaning to the world (Mulhall, 1996: Dillon, 1988). Such reflection can be ‘…defined as the study of the essence of consciousness as experienced from the first person point of view.’ (Woodruff Smith, 2007:1) and, as such, engages the self in considering the meanings things have in our experience. It is this first person point of view, subjectivity, and its role in giving meaning that becomes the principal focus of my investigations. Drawing, as experience, is a particular way of coming to know the world both philosophically and practically, as a complex network of thoughts, feelings and awareness which holds particular significance and value subjectively. Prosser (2004) asserts that ‘phenomenology is determined not to be either a science of objects or the subject, but that of experience: it concentrates upon where being and consciousness make contact.’(Prosser, 2004: 6). And so a paradigm emerges within which personal practice is able to found itself in a conception of drawing as a way of learning about the world and its objects; at that point where being and consciousness intersect. The outcomes document a move from description of the ‘lifeworld’ (Moran, 2005) or ‘lived experience' (Dilthey, 1985) towards an interpretation of the subjective; generative knowledge (Figure 1). FIG. 1. CHANGE, 2011: GRAPHITE AND WATERCOLOUR ON CANVAS. 2 TRACEY | journal: Drawing Knowledge 2013 Geoffrey Bailey (1982) in Drawing and the Drawing Activity: A Phenomenological Investigation, examines the phenomena of drawing from this philosophical standpoint. Bailey’s consideration of whether drawing, the ‘draughtsman’, is able to make actual, or visible, a ‘perceptual interchange’ through a reflection of the world, essentially defines drawing as a process that constitutes a move towards meaning. This movement, Bailey contends, is evident in the imaginative engagement that ‘brings time and space together’ (Bailey, 1982), a coalescence. This demonstration of ‘a move’ from the ‘lived experience’ to a consideration of that experience, establishes the order and sustainability of the ‘drawings world’. It is proposed that this becomes evident through a movement in thought; from the concrete towards the imaginary. THE CONCRETE My field of perception is constantly filled with a play of colours, noises and fleeting tactile sensations which I cannot relate precisely to the context of my clearly perceived world, yet which I nevertheless immediately ‘place’ in the world… (Merleau-Ponty 2006, p. x) Artists retain a belief in the fundamental importance of drawing within practice (Rawson, 1979, 1987: Kovats, 2007: Berger, 2008), utilizing a variety of materials and approaches; photography and installation, digital technologies, paper and paint. But what is it that all these have in common? A common purpose? A common function? Indeed do they have anything in common? Within these contexts how are we to view drawings’ claims to the immediacy of thought and the visualisation of thinking? In beginning with the question: Why draw? The focus becomes a subjective reflection of the role and function of drawing within personal practice; a question of the relationship between perception and its interpretation through drawing. In attempting to answer the question – why draw? I began to examine the motivations that compelled me to begin drawing. Drawing always began in the landscape (Figure 2) in situ, before moving to the studio - What was it that I was searching for within the activity of drawing? What was the source, the instigator? These questions were mulled over within the journal in trying to return to the beginnings of practice. 3 TRACEY | journal: Drawing Knowledge 2013 FIG. 2. DRAWING IN SITU: SKETCHBOOK 2009 As I turn my attention inwards to think about the interweaving perceptions, as I walk, I am aware that everything is happening outside of me. I am within, reaching, straining to be out, my body as a part of the experience. When I begin to draw I focus all of my attention on all of these perceptions. They are a part of the experience, but how can I capture the smell of the morning, the sound of the water, the feeling of the sun as it seems to glare into my thoughts? Is it this that I want to capture – is it even possible? In the same way as I have to think to look and see, concentrating on one small aspect and working outwards, I will have to begin to think in a different way. The experience is a large and vital thing, I have to look at each aspect in turn focusing my thoughts on each aspect, isolating it. (Extract from author's journal). The writing revealed the importance of all the senses in contributing to a feeling of immersion, a location or rootedness within both the landscape and the activity of drawing. Each perception contributed to the totality of the ‘lived experience’ (Dilthey, 1985). Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2004: 2006) identified different aspects of perception as being pivotal in establishing the metaphysical or material reality, the concrete, of what we perceive. He saw an inter-relationship between the body, movement, and the mind as moving towards an understanding of perception as a foundation within phenomenology. Perception is seen as ‘…the background from which all acts stand out, and is presupposed by them.’ (MerleauPonty 2006, p. xi) accessed through sight, sound, touch, taste and smell which, when combined with memory, imagination and the thinking process, conceives of the body as being at the heart of a relational world. 4 TRACEY | journal: Drawing Knowledge 2013 The world we live in, our relationship to it and the objects that inhabit it are founded on our perceptions. Our sense experience [Sentir] (Heidegger, 1962) provides us with our entry into the world through vision, touch, smell, taste and sound. Within personal drawing practice, this perceptual entry into the world, coalescence is rooted in the landscape. I began to consider how the activity of drawing describes and mediates its own reality, through considering O’Riley’s (2006) assertion that art, potentially, not only ‘describes or shows reality’ but also can describe how it describes; being at one and the same time in the drawing but also of the drawing. As I settle myself to draw, I feel the slithering sand beneath the rug and notice the wind whipping at the edges of the paper. I select my graphite, before beginning to draw I look around and orientate myself in this particular place. I feel the dunes at my back, sheltering, as I begin to draw the line traces the relationship between the forms that stand in relation to me, describing a relational space. The slip of land across the estuary, the tracts of the ebbing tide, the breakwaters emerge vertically to counter the horizontality of the sweeping sands and dunes. The scrubby trees, at the periphery of my vision, are bent and twisted by the insistent wind high on the rising headland. The line begins to plot the relationships between, the space between. (Extract from author's journal). FIG. 3. DRAWING IN SITU: SKETCHBOOK 2010 5 TRACEY | journal: Drawing Knowledge 2013 In considering both what is being drawn as well as the process of drawing itself, the dual nature of describing, and describing its own describing visualizes a plotting of the forms within the landscape. A concern begins to emerge, within the drawings, of tracing or describing the relationships between the objects of the world and their relationship to the drawer (Figure 3). Initially, drawing situ, in the landscape, attempts to address this duality, exploration begins to capture the essence of the experience of ‘being there’ (Da-sein) (Heidegger, 1962), situated, within an embodied and relational world. Strokes of graphite begin to plot the space between forms. The marks expand, within the areas of positive and negative space, to describe the uncertainty of this temporal experience as a triangulation between self-landscape-drawing (Figure 4). A description of a relational space at the heart of which is the experience of drawing within this constructed orientational space: a ‘coalescence’ (Bailey, 1982). FIG. 4. DRAWING IN SITU: SKETCHBOOK 2010 The landscape, or place, is described within the drawings through the linear connections of form. Form (Langer, 1953: Focillon, 1989: Carroll, 1999) orientates both subject and object in ‘being there’ (Heidegger, 1962), emerging within the drawings as the connection between self, embodied relational world and the temporality of experience, at one and the 6 TRACEY | journal: Drawing Knowledge 2013 same time, in the drawing, as well as articulating a description through drawing. Line repeatedly traces form inserted successively as each drawing describes a series of viewpoints, articulations of the same space, capturing varieties of possible aspects and appearances (Figure 5). The intention was to try to move from one response to another, between the layers of reality and temporality. The drawings, at this time, are predominantly linear, the layers slip and play over one another, implying a fragility or ‘moment’ (Augenblick) (Heidegger, 1962) through the varying line weight, intensity and spontaneity of mark. The absorption, within the narrow confines of the activity of each drawing, enhances the experience; heightening perceptions of light, form and of being in a specific moment; the concrete, the real. FIG. 5. GLASSON ESTUARY: SKETCHBOOK, 2010 As these complex and integrated systems intersect or converge, there can be no memory without experience just as there can be no experience without perception, and so ‘…normal functioning must be understood as a process of integration in which the text of the external world is not so much copied as composed’ (Merleau-Ponty 2006, p. 10). By implication, this composition is internal, as perception, the concrete that anchors the external, is integrated internally and begins to found a relational, an orientational and ‘imaginary’ space. 7 TRACEY | journal: Drawing Knowledge 2013 THE IMAGINARY ‘…nature appears not only as outside me…but it is also discernable at the centre of subjectivity.' (Merleau-Ponty, 2006:403). Hooker (1987) discusses the concept of imagery rooted in landscape as ‘…a way of entering each attentively, and exploring what is there, as it enlarges the world…’ (Hooker, 1987:3) and in doing so it ‘…relates the person to the other, instead of reducing the other to the confines of the self.’ (Ibid :3). Drawing, in these respects, engages the self within this enlargement of the world, in attempting to define my relationship to the landscape, as a physical presence at a point within the panorama. These experiences within the living, changing and moving landscape, form a relationship to the other, visualised within the drawings as the coalescence of an emergent structure or rhythm, as it occurs for a moment, from a point or generating structure. This point of coalescence emerges from within the drawing process, revealing a relational space at a given moment, both internal and external, enlarging the world without confining it. In this way, ‘…the space of inner and outer – of mind and world - are transformed…’ (Malpas, 1999:5), thus, the Other, as external space, is internalized and inner space is itself externalized. In considering these ideas, it is possible, then, to construct a cogent argument that begins to see a dissolution of the object/subject dichotomy (Çüçen, No date); just as our ‘inner’ selves can be discovered through place and the embodied space in which we dwell (Bachelard, 1994), in turn, the Other or external space is incorporated within us as memory, through drawing; conjoining experience, memory and imagination. FIG. 6. RE-DRAWING IN THE STUDIO, 2010 (158CM X 98 CM) 8 TRACEY | journal: Drawing Knowledge 2013 In beginning to examine these connections the activity moved to the studio (Figure 6) in order to clarify methodologies and methods of working. The studio offers the possibility of the suspension of the direct experience of both the landscape and drawing activity within it. It allows a focus on those aspects of my intentional acts and their contents that do not depend on the existence of a represented object, ‘bracketing’ (epoché) (Husserl in Woodruff-Smith, 2007) the experience to enable the suspension of assumptions about the external world. So what is it that I am looking for in the remembered experience that I want to express in the drawings ? There comes a point within the process, when the built knowledge and experience become intrinsic to the development of the idea. Increasing levels of reflection and evaluation lead to opportunities to see the work on a more holistic level. Aiming for that balance or equilibrium, that reveals, in part, the essence of the experience at a moment and in the moment. The stripping away of the peripheral structures and marks within the image allows a distillation process to take place. Trying to allow the work to drive itself, with the aim of freeing myself from embodiment within the image, allowing the drawing to connect with itself. It has form and content, it is about itself as well as indicating something else. It is as realistic as possible and as abstract as possible. (Extract from author's journal). Drawing within the studio suspends the immersive experience and asks instead for an interpretation that, in turn, reveals differing relational aspects. In remembering, the ‘forgetfulness’ (Heidegger, 1962 :69) of memory, elucidates temporal relationships alongside interpretations of experience, allowing for a consideration of the degrees of separation, and the interdependence, between landscape and place, other and self; conflating knowledge and experience. And so the removal of the immediate experience of the landscape and the move to the studio, articulates an interpretation of the concrete through the utilization of memory and imagination. The direct nature of the drawing process became an immersion, each mark, an absorption in the reinterpretation of the remembered experience, each mark, an embodiment of the reinterpreted subjective experience built into a cohesive whole, through layers of line (Figure 7), a ‘moment’ captured, suspended, plotting, tracing, interpreting the oscillation between experience, memory and imagination. This deep sense of immersion and the totality of this world came alive only through the use of light, as form, which can only establish itself in relation to darkness. The move towards generating the line through light, enabling me to work quickly, in response to the fleeting impressions, it gives depth and allows me to grasp that ‘time’, to fix it, just for that moment of working. In looking internally, at the memory of that experience of perceiving and drawing within the landscape, I think about that experience which I have been able to ‘see’ 9 TRACEY | journal: Drawing Knowledge 2013 through the line drawings and strip away all that is superfluous to that experience – what is left as I look intently? (Extract from author's journal). The articulation of the process of revealing, plotting and tracing needed to be more fully explored through the notion of ‘moment’. An instance, captured and suspended, examining more carefully a conception of form within a relational space. FIG. 7. RE-DRAWING: GRAPHITE ON PAPER, 2011 (158CM X 98 CM) As the line defines form it begins to fluctuate between the reality of the experience and the refinement of the memory. In remembering, the experience was ‘cleared’ (Gelichtet) (Heidegger 1962:171) and what was revealed was form being defined by light. The process of drawing records and re-defines this movement (Figure 8) , and in doing so establishes its own reality, its own temporality – the drawing as both concrete and imaginary. FIG. 8. FORM AND LIGHT: WAX AND INK ON PAPER 2011 (158CM X 98 CM) 10 TRACEY | journal: Drawing Knowledge 2013 In order to explore this idea more carefully new ways of working were developed in the studio. To extend the notion of the revealing of a relational space the notion of ‘moment’ was scrutinized. In suspending the ‘lived experience’ of the landscape, the line within the drawings, initially done within the studio, was a re-tracing of the experience ; refined but essentially recreating the drawings in situ. In order to move away from the totality of the immersive experience it was necessary to peel away the tacit knowledge of both the gesture and the mark. Thus, generating structures needed to be explored which focused on the concept of ‘an emergent structure or rhythm’ (Figure 9) . FIG. 9. SPACE AND LIGHT, 2012: DIGITAL DRAWING. This examination led to the exploration of light generating optics that were sequentially photographed. The rhythms and structures which were generated as a result of the moving optic assemblages define their own space as light disclosed form (Figure 10) ; revealed in that ‘moment’. Thus, a relational knowledge is revealed through the process of making. This articulation of form conjoins experience, memory and imagination in evolving multifaceted meanings. The immediacy of the process of photographing the light alludes to a duality; a reality of the drawing itself alongside the projected unreality of the imaginary. The digital drawings demonstrate a transition from description to interpretation, form is articulated through its own temporality: a point where consciousness and being coincide in a ‘moment’ (Augenblick) (Heidegger, 1962). It can also be said that this temporality discloses a movement in thought, from the concrete to the imaginary, from description towards interpretation. 11 TRACEY | journal: Drawing Knowledge 2013 FIG. 10. FORM 1, 2012: DIGITAL DRAWING. It is possible, then, to draw phenomenological parallels through Heidegger’s assertion that, ‘Being finds it’s meaning in temporality.’(Heidegger, 1962 :41) as the possibility that Being can be grasped in time, through the ontological function of Being-in-the-world as a horizon. Drawing, as a reflexive and reflective cognitive process, locates itself through its articulation of an embodied and relational knowledge, and it is this process of engagement within the world, that allows drawing to articulate, or reveal, a subjective truth (Wahrheit); something that ‘opens up a world’ (Heidegger, 1971 :40). IN CONCLUSION The research process has allowed me, as an artist, to engage in considering directly my embodied and perceptual experience as it is brought to the surface of the paper by the process of drawing. As drawing mediates my relational embodied experience of the world, a conception of temporality is embedded, as process, which is explicated through the creative act itself. Seen within these contexts drawing, as corporeality, provides a horizon against which it is possible to begin to examine embodied expression, within the interpretation of ‘Being-in-the-world’ (Heidegger, 1962). Thus, it is possible to say that, as time passes through ‘Being-in-the-world’, the subject or being, recreates the world, or grasps it, through its temporality (Zeitlichkeit). In grasping, our understanding reveals that everything has meaning, and we find that this same structure of being 'underlies all relationships' (Merleau-Ponty, 2006). Drawing, through its temporal nature, reveals a subjective truth as something that ‘opens up a world’ (Heidegger, 1971 :40) ; 12 TRACEY | journal: Drawing Knowledge 2013 How does time function in relation to the experience, the memory and the process? Initially I had thought time played only a minor role. On reflection it is inherently linked with not only the experience of external time, but with internal time, in relation to memory as well as the interpretation/capture of a ‘moment of vision’ (Augenblick) within the drawing. It governs all. (Extract from author's journal). ‘Being-in-the-world’ (Heidegger, 1962: Merleau-Ponty 2006), the horizon in front of which all of our knowledge and understanding is placed, provides a phenomenological parallel, within which, drawing can be said to embody the past, present and future; they exist alongside one another, interconnected, intertwined, and revealed through drawing (Figure 11) . In one instance stretching out, in another, parallel, instance, drawing, is enmeshed in an imaginary future that has emerged from the its own past and ‘…in the way of its own being…’ (Heidegger, 1971 :41). FIG.11. FORM 8 - SUSPENSION, 2012: DIGITAL DRAWING. The act and activity of drawing becomes its own ontological source within the self, through the body; recreating the world, embodied in the world, as memory and a conjectural possibility of the future. As a ‘moment’ coalesces on a surface (Figure 12) , not as a representation of temporality but as temporality itself, literally and metaphorically, not only is the world brought to light but our subjective position and relationships within that world are revealed as both knowledge and experience. [Figure 12 - (Dis)location of Space animation] (https://vimeo.com/46868913) 13 TRACEY | journal: Drawing Knowledge 2013 REFERENCES Bachelard G. (1994). The Poetics of Space. Foreword by John R. Stilgoe. Boston: Beacon Press. Bailey, H.B. 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Mulhall S. (1996). Heidegger and Being and Time. London : Routledge. O'Riley, T. (2006) An inaudible dialogue. Working Papers in Art and Design 4. Available at: 14 TRACEY | journal: Drawing Knowledge 2013 http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/papers/wpades/vol4/torfull.htm1 (last accessed 24/7/ 2012) Prosser, B. (2004). An Archetypal Psychology of the Ordinary: An Investigation Through Drawing. University of the West of England, Bristol: Doctoral Thesis. Rawson, P. (1987) Drawing. Second Edition. Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press. Rawson P. (1979). Seeing Through Drawing. London : British Broadcasting Corporation. Woodruff-Smith D. (2007). Husserl. Abingdon : Routledge. Young J. (2001). Heidegger’s Philosophy of Art. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Extracts are taken from the artists Journal that documents drawing activity through phenomenological description. The journal, also, facilitates the development of a philosophical methodology, in considering personal drawing practice and its foundations -2008 until the present. 15