The taste of tree?
(2012)
author(s): Deborah Harty, Phil Sawdon
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
The taste of a tree; the connection of [the] senses, the transference of sensations to smell a colour or hear a drawing…
Walking around a tree, observing the colour, texture and outline, sitting to draw, to document the actualities of the object … this presents no interest … Walking around [the tree] observing the colour, texture, outline, breathing, mind and body absorbing tree, drawing through sensation the memory of the encounter … that presents the interest.
The exposition considers whether the senses are connected and transferable in memory sufficiently to draw the taste of tree through the association of recalled sensations. Adopting Merleau-Ponty’s (2004, p.61) suggestion in The World of Perception, that, ‘[…] every quality is related to qualities associated with other senses. Honey is sugary. Yet sugariness in the realm of taste […] constitutes the same sticky presence as honey in the realm of touch.” humhyphenhum seek to uncover whether it is possible to draw the taste of tree through the association of recalled sensations; are the senses sufficiently connected to be transferable?
[Hyper]drawing
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Russell Marshall, Phil Sawdon
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
[Hyper]drawing is a research project.
Hyperdrawing is an opportunity for [fine art] drawing practice.
This Research Catalogue exposition documents ongoing research into Hyperdrawing: Hyperdrawing is an ambiguous practice. Hyperdrawing adopts a position, a perspective or viewpoint, that a lack of definition should be embraced and that ambiguity presents an opportunity. Hyperdrawing has the capacity to enable and sustain drawing practices.
Drawing Disambiguation
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Russell Marshall, Phil Sawdon
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Hyperdrawing adopts a position, a perspective or viewpoint, that a lack of definition should be embraced and that ambiguity presents an opportunity.
Drawing Disambiguation can be seen as the process of resolving the conflicts that arise when drawing is ambiguous. Our hypothesis is that Drawing Disambiguation could be established as a methodology for Hyperdrawing. The initial enquiry will take the form of a collaborative drawing, with text and image all being seen as ‘marks’, ‘lines’ and ‘gestures’ in a drawn dialogue / discourse.
I/We have been invited by an editor of JAR to contribute various ‘opening statements’ as part of the journal’s aim to share part of the peer review process and to facilitate a possible broader discussion within the research community (the ACADEMY?). In effect I am a peer reviewer who has lost a vowel, gained a hyphen and is now reordered as a pre-reviewer and validator and I wonder to what end? I am sceptical however I am a supporter of JAR. I am engaged in monkey business. My statement is published as personal comment. It comprises ‘just a few words’.
In the guise of the various meanings pertaining to statements perhaps it is only fair to confess an interest in this particular exposition as the co-supervisor of the PhD thesis (MacDonald, 2010) at (in the words of MacDonald) whose tail end you will find Alpha [the chimpanzee].
Alpha [A REPORT TO AN ACADEMY] is a four year old ‘itchy sore’, and a ‘scab that refuses to heal’. The exposition is ethically aware and not overtly mischief making but it is engaged with monkey business and it acknowledges the ‘disruptive potential’ of Alpha’s drawings.
The author sees herself as a drawing animal. Alpha was a chimpanzee.
Alpha the exposition is of artistic and intellectual interest to researchers in the field of contemporary fine art drawing. It is academic, scholarly and engagingly accessible. Alpha (the exposition or the chimpanzee?) clearly articulates, narrates and demonstrates the ‘artistic’ tests and methods that were/are used to investigate the main research questions and in doing so the author provides a methodological framework through practical strategies (‘actions and practices’) for others to possibly adapt and or adopt albeit in the authors words retrospectively.
Le singe est sur la branche et la souris est sous la table …