PIRG Group Art Activity
The group art activity offers the members a way to reflect on the notion of empathy, particularly in relation to material engagement, through collaborative means.
Between: Material (on-line) Conversation
The aim for this group activity was to understand better the 'in-between' space that becomes created as the drawing moves from one person to the next. The group felt it would be a useful exercise to explore this space to understand better how empathy, creativity and relationality may develop through material engagement.
For the activity, each member was asked to document the process of the drawing by taking a photograph of the artwork before it was passed on to the next person and also to write a short text that described the thought process. The images and texts have been brought together here to form a visual diary that inform how the drawing became developed.
The drawing was passed on in the following order:
Noriko, Jane, Cheng-Chu, Luisa, Daniel, Yonat, Yvonne
For the activity, each member was asked to document the process of the drawing by taking a photograph of the artwork before it was passed on to the next person and also to write a short text that described the thought process. The images and texts have been brought together here to form a visual diary that inform how the drawing became developed.
The drawing was passed on in the following order:
Noriko, Jane, Cheng-Chu, Luisa, Daniel, Yonat, Yvonne
1. Noriko
I had the easy task of starting the drawing for the group activity. I used pages taken from two different Japanese books. I thought I would like to write my own story using the 'in-between' spaces of the text. You literally have to 'read between the lines' in order to engage with the drawing. I quite like the way the brown and the white lines jostle for attention making the 'space' of the page more ambiguous.
I had the easy task of starting the drawing for the group activity. I used pages taken from two different Japanese books. I thought I would like to write my own story using the 'in-between' spaces of the text. You literally have to 'read between the lines' in order to engage with the drawing. I quite like the way the brown and the white lines jostle for attention making the 'space' of the page more ambiguous.
2. Jane
This is a beautiful drawing. I love the minimalism of it, the materials and the simplicity. The fragments of Japanese lettering on the torn paper strips act as little hints of Noriko herself. It has the illusion of randomness (torn paper) but is fully controlled and ordered. How can I enhance what is here? It challenges me to make a material intervention, rather than a digital one. I’m not thinking logically about this but trying to respond intuitively. Perhaps interweave strips of some material, possibly lens tissue, across the strips? But that would produce a grid – don’t want to go that way. I have a vision in my mind of the paper taking form, expanding out of itself organically and warping the surface on which the image lies. Vision and reality are two totally different things. This is proving more tricky to achieve than I realised. Not quite what I envisaged and the image shows something closer to sculpture than drawing. But I think I like it, it intrigues me.
This is a beautiful drawing. I love the minimalism of it, the materials and the simplicity. The fragments of Japanese lettering on the torn paper strips act as little hints of Noriko herself. It has the illusion of randomness (torn paper) but is fully controlled and ordered. How can I enhance what is here? It challenges me to make a material intervention, rather than a digital one. I’m not thinking logically about this but trying to respond intuitively. Perhaps interweave strips of some material, possibly lens tissue, across the strips? But that would produce a grid – don’t want to go that way. I have a vision in my mind of the paper taking form, expanding out of itself organically and warping the surface on which the image lies. Vision and reality are two totally different things. This is proving more tricky to achieve than I realised. Not quite what I envisaged and the image shows something closer to sculpture than drawing. But I think I like it, it intrigues me.
3. Cheng-Chu
Receive the image from Jane. It is an image within dilemmas between two-dimension and three-dimension, between hand-made and digital images. Therefore, I decreased the dpi of the image as a way to unveil the image itself - an image made by pixels.
Receive the image from Jane. It is an image within dilemmas between two-dimension and three-dimension, between hand-made and digital images. Therefore, I decreased the dpi of the image as a way to unveil the image itself - an image made by pixels.
4. Luisa
When I received the drawing from Cheng-Chu, I felt that I should pass it on to the next person Wenke Sun, without making any intervention, because the image seemed untouchable...but looking closely at it, I saw (what I think it may be) the Chinese characters and I wanted to read and understand the message, but I couldn't as I do not know the language. I then started to take a deeper closer look into the drawing and started to draw my own characters. It is about a 'memento' between the balance of thoughts and the colours,
When I received the drawing from Cheng-Chu, I felt that I should pass it on to the next person Wenke Sun, without making any intervention, because the image seemed untouchable...but looking closely at it, I saw (what I think it may be) the Chinese characters and I wanted to read and understand the message, but I couldn't as I do not know the language. I then started to take a deeper closer look into the drawing and started to draw my own characters. It is about a 'memento' between the balance of thoughts and the colours,
5. Daniel
I do it by overlapping and obscuring. The overlapping of the calligraphy cuts off the whole space forming the three kinds of spaces. At the same time, I overlapped the whole picture by original picture.
I do it by overlapping and obscuring. The overlapping of the calligraphy cuts off the whole space forming the three kinds of spaces. At the same time, I overlapped the whole picture by original picture.
6. Yonat
I received the group drawing (work-in-progress) from Daniel. The drawing looks perfect. I was looking for an intervention of a transformative nature. By this I mean, materially transformative. Previously group images had been transformed to moving images where movement was added. However, I didn’t want to produce a moving image because this was a problem for Yvonne who is after me in the chain. Also, I am aware of the late date (images + texts were meant to reach Noriko on Monday 13.9.2020), therefore I have decided to go with what there is. In this image the only transformation I could think of was the on-going change of light. I switched on the light in my study/studio; it is normally off during the day to save energy, especially during the summer’s months. I took the firs photo (left), then my lap-top turned itself off. I quickly captured the process (middle) before it went completely dark (right). I like the un-expected collaboration between the inanimate and animate that occurred.
7. Yvonne
I looked hard at the image. I felt a process, with the final dark image as an ending of all things.
The first image feels scientific, the underlying squares are apparently used as rough guidelines to draw small white lines either around, or within, the squares. The effect is that of presenting a science formula. This gave rise (for me) to seeing the first image as the first part of the process, the voice of the scientist. The voice of science unheard, here in the second image, now becomes a warning, as the third image sits in peripheral vision. The scientists have fallen silent, ignoring the warning we have drifted into oblivion. My intervention was to reduce the lights to four in number, as the whole period I spent with the triptych had me wanting to express my experience as a stark ‘title’ the four remaining lights seen as the four horsemen of the apocalypse.