Hi Ron, thanks for this.
Look great. It’s such interesting material in the rebus of ideas and images. i.e. both visually and ideationally – the business for me will be to put it to work in a way that finds a gap and nudges the field along. This forum / platform is nice for the assembly and the interplay.
Have you read Barbara Maria Stafford’s Visual Analogy: Consciousness as the Art of Connecting? You may find it useful / relevant / interesting. J.Hillis Miller’s Illustration is v relevant to your area here too.
Also: W.J.T. Mitchell’s Picture Theory. Also his Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology.
I particularly liked your whimsical looks at line with that slippage of indexical marking versus agreed conventional coding – i.e. the agreed idea that one thing might stand (in) for another – and the seemingly unconscious translation of one thing for another. It seems to me that there are several things going on in these areas you are looking at / into :). It will be interesting to see how you might categorise them and then put them to the test as it were. cheers, Patrick
(from Meeting on 31st March)
hey Patrick
just a few notes from the meeting w Ron today
We discussed Ron’s broad interests and focused on what came from the theoretical PhD and what from that work could be the launching pad for a hands on inquiry
we talked about the benefits and difficulties of involving others in experiment with recognition codes and the this approval similar to approval to conduct interviews.
Because of Ron’s consuming interest in the recognition triggers I suggested that
he will need to decide whether recognition codes for which he is search are an invariant that operate across all circumstances and nurse diversities or if recognition codes are, fact the product of the construction of a system and context through which codes emerge relevant to that system. (a rough distinction between science model and an arts model- discovering invariance in in contrast to the production of continuous variation — declaration that I barrack on the benefits of continuous variation)
The next 8 – 12 months are mapped out in two parts:
1.
the June critique / showing at HDR gathering in which Ron might propose to us what her will produce to be show and discuss and what he hopes to elicit from the feedback
and,
2.
from that crit, he will rewrite a proposal and focus on the practice-led aspects (within a month after the crit) which will form the basis of visual work and writing that become the confirmation.
I thought that annotated drawing was one strong approach that comes directly from the previous research and the images of garbage heaps offered and good visual investigation of the condition of recognition and the systems of attention and value that drive or might drive recognition.
all the best for Sydney
cheers
Jondi
.
Hi Chaps
A quick note on some of what I’m doing:-
Photographing ‘hard waste’ sculptures on nature strips. I’m looking at piles of junk. This is about stretching the ‘recognition moment’ from half- second to maybe a few seconds, and analysing what is happening. I’m beginning to see these piles as nature strip sculpture. Heading for junk yards next.
20 Everyday Objects Matrix – I am still ‘degrading’ line drawings and other pictures of everyday objects. Looking at how abstract a picture of an object can be, before it is unrecognizable. I’ve done 5 matrices of 20 so far. That’s a lot of drawing and photoshop. But the process is throwing up interesting questions and causing me to make distinctions I had not made before. Trying to be systematic here guys!
The annotated one-second drawing – I have been drawing objects as quickly as I can, in the hope that the sheer speed of depiction will draw out what I consider to be essential in the depiction (and therefore recognition) of an object. One way I am doing this is by setting up a table of 20 objects and trying to draw them all recognizably in a minute. Can I get it down to 20 seconds?
Rocks – I have been collecting rocks (boulders really) which have interesting object or animal features which I could bring out through augmentation – Paleolithic style.
Wittgenstein’s theory of pictures – In the Tractatus Wittgenstein famously forwarded his ‘picture-theory’ of language. At that stage in his life, he argued that our ability to see and create pictures is more primary than our facility with spoken or written language. His theories of how representation works, both for pictures and language, are providing me with a good basis for developing a working theory which will enable me to more clearly characterise what is happening when I draw an object and someone recognizes it. In particular Wittgenstein gives great weight to how pictures intersect with the world and social practices. What he calls ‘pictorial form’ is based on this constantly changing relationship.
Paleolithic Art – You can tell from my reading list that I’m looking at the origins of depiction. The ability to see objects and animals in the stars and in stains and in the shadows on the walls of a caves may pre-date spoken language. The leap from seeing the shapes on the wall and augmenting them using depictive techniques is probably not a great one even for the early hunter-gatherer artist. I would like to visit some of the caves (particulary Pech-Merle) and see exactly how these drawing were made.
Children’s drawings (token representation vs schematic representation). There is some interesting data in some of the studies of child development about how drawing (and depiction) begins.
I’m reading: –
Hillis-Miller – Illustration
Lewis-Williams – The Mind in the Cave
Clottes – Cave Art
Lange-Kuttner & Thomas – Drawing and Looking
Various papers on Visual Recognition and Cave Art
Here’s a sample of some interesting papers:-
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/september-2011/article/prehistoric-cave-paintings-of-horses-were-spot-on-say-scientists
http://www.livescience.com/25269-cavemen-better-modern-artists-animal-walks.html
http://www.pbs.org/howartmadetheworld/episodes/human/ramachandran/
http://jn.physiology.org/content/80/1/324