Thinking through Drawing 2012 Drawing in STEAM

The 2012 Thinking through Drawing symposium Drawing in STEAM was held at Wimbledon College of Art on the 12th to 14th September, in association with Loughborough University and Teachers College, Columbia University. This book compiles drawings made during the event in response to the presentations and workshops. Published by 123Draw: Michelle Fava, Angela Brew & Andrea Kantrowitz. In association with Loughborough University, Teachers College, Columbia University and University of the Arts London. Cover Image and photos by Sergio Fava and Daniel Pope, book design by Simon Downs. All material is copyright of the artists and 123Draw. All rights are retained. Thinking Through Drawing Seminar 2012 Drawing in STEAM Held at the Wimbeldon College of Art, 12th to 14th of September 2012 Contents Yoon Bahk – Notes on Scribing 1 Shaun Belcher and Moogee the Art Dog at Thinking Through Drawing 2012 16 31 45 54 i How is drawing used within and between STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and maths)? What is the relationship between drawing practices in the Arts and in STEM subjects? What is our current understanding of drawing, cognition and learning, and how is it contributing to curriculum development in instructional design in these areas? These were the questions posed at the 2012 symposium, Thinking through Drawing 2012: Drawing in STEAM, in October 2012. These drawings are the result of four artists attending the symposium, they respond to presentations given addressing the role of drawing practice in STEM disciplines, our growing understanding of drawing and cognition, and the potential for pedagogic and curriculum development. Certain themes emerged, such as the use of drawing in medicinal contexts, both as an aid in surgical training, and as an aid to recovery and personal understanding of illness. The use of drawing as a tool for thinking and visualisation was also a strong theme, with presentations addressing this from numerous disciplinary perspectives. We saw that a drawing can be used as proof, and that it can (literally) make us more capable of learning, problem solving and creativity. Yoon Bahk, Robert Shadbolt, Shaun Belcher and Sarah Blake drew tirelessly throughout the event, offering illustrations, questions and personal takes on the event and its contributions. This publication accompanies the online special edition of TRACEY: Drawing in STEAM. The original papers can be downloaded and read there. Follow Thinking through Drawing at: twitter.com/DrawCogs www.facebook.com/drawingandcognition drawingandcognition.blogspot.com Special thanks should be extended to Simon Betts and Stephen Farthing of University of the Arts London, to Simon Downs and Russ Marshall from Loughborough University and to Judith Burton and Barbara Tversky, Columbia University for their ongoing support and encouragement. Yoon Bahk – Notes on Scribing 1 As a designer who works with people from a lot of disciplines, part of my role in a multidisciplinary team is to act as the translator within the group and I do this most of the times by telling stories through drawings. As a visual scribe, my role is similar that I act as a translator who puts whatever is being said into a visual format. The images you see here are the result of my live documentation of the Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012. For the event, I was asked to record the event through drawing. This type of task is commonly known as visual scribing or graphic facilitation. I see the goal of scribing to make ideas more broadly accessible to people of different disciplines and backgrounds who might speak a different language either due to their nationality or area of professional expertise. Having scribed at other events before this symposium was particularly interesting as the theme of the symposium involved drawing as communication itself, featuring Drawing in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths). At such events I often draw somewhere where the audience or most of the people present can see what I’m doing. This is by definition closer to graphic Yoon Bahk A native of South Korea, Yoon spent a good portion of her formative years in the USA and UK. She was trained as an industrial designer at KAIST (2006) in South Korea and then she moved to London where she was awarded a double Masters from the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London in Innovation Design Engineering (2008). Her background and education has given her a bilingual, multicultural and interdisciplinary outlook, enabling her to weave between the social spaces between cultures, disciplines including design and engineering, and commercial and academic worlds. Since finishing her studies, Yoon has worked as a design consultant, developing innovation strategies using design thinking and methods to tackle problems. She has also developed toys with Laughing Onions Ltd., a UK-based toy inventor, since 2009. She has worked for companies including Unilever, Pepsico, Barry Callebaut and LG. In 2011, Yoon set up Studio Jammo Ltd. Yoon has always been passionate about doodling and this had led to graphic facilitation forming a central role in Studio Jammo’s activities. 2 facilitation than scribing, as I’m more involved in what’s going on as it happens. In contrast, for talks and lectures, I’m more often located the back or side of the auditorium where people can’t see my drawings until the talk is finished, which was the case of the TTD symposium. As was the case at the TTD symposium, people at these events often ask how I can remember everything that’s been said? The answer is, I don’t! The information from the speaker is being filtered through me to be drawn, and I can only draw what I can understand. Transcribing what is being said into a written language is hard enough to keep up with someone talking, but to put this into a drawing, you have to go through an added step of translating it into another language: a visual one. So the truth is, what’s going on in my brain is not frantically trying to keep a record of everything but rather boiling down what’s important or interesting to me, while chucking out the minor details and things I can’t comprehend. Simultaneous translators like to get as much information about the talks or speeches they will be translating so that they can make sure they know all the words in the language to be translated and to understand the subject matter. It’s the same with scribing. Prior to events, I like to be prepared with the right visual vocabulary that will represent what’s being said as much as possible. At the TTD symposium I didn’t get so much information in advance other than that the common theme for all the talks was drawing which luckily was somewhat of my own territory so I didn’t need so much prep work beforehand. Due to the theme of the symposium being on drawings, oftentimes, the speaker presented a drawing. Thus, not only was I simplifying what was being said verbally, but a lot of the times I was simplifying the drawings being presented into small, recognisable icons. In summation, live scribing helps create a lasting memory of a lecture for an audience through imagery. These images are partially open to misinterpretation, which is also what makes them particularly interesting. People try and understand what I have drawn, they scratch their brains trying to remember what was said that triggered me to draw that, which in turn initiates an interesting inner discourse and sometimes with others. As a result, these drawings prove to be more inviting for people and they tend to revisit them more then their own, more ‘verbatim’ written notes of the event. Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 3 4 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 5 6 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 7 8 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 9 10 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 11 12 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 13 14 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 15 Shaun Belcher and Moogee the Art Dog at Thinking Through Drawing 2012 16 Shaun Belcher Shaun Belcher is a prolific artist whose practice encompasses photography, painting, drawing, poetry and song writing. Belcher frequently posts his doodles on his blog, which functions like a diary. They retrace his mood, his frustrations with the arts scene or his views on the art world with a deadpan humour. His drawings are a mixture between comics, scribbles and caricatures and are made with an unhesitating black pen. The message is straightforward and clear. In some of his cartoons such as “Give me the Turner Prize, I am as shit as anyone”, his slang vocabulary as well his definitive statements can have something moving and aggressive at the same time – as if distant remnants of teenage hood. His ironic and shameless comments on the art scene are indeed serious and make him at times sound desperately ambitious and direct. For instance “I am a pretentious 25 year old with no fucking skills but by networking, crawling, by doing voluntary works in a gallery I now have a small foothold on the art world…” By talking about his experience, he brings up questions that any artist might ask himself: The STEAM conference was the first time I have drawn in public and I found myself analysing my drawings as I participated as well as finding myself drawn into the fascinating series of presentations. For that reason the style changes through the three days. Early on I drew as I listened and pretty quickly found myself falling behind as not being used to live ‘scribing’. By midway in the proceedings I was starting to draw single cartoon equivalences of the lectures or actually attempting interactive drawings as part of lectures e.g. self-portrait by touch. By the end I was drawing so much some off-subject jokes and doodles crept Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 in and finally I ended up drawing a complete cartoon booklet using the free blank booklet given out at beginning of conference. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole event even though I was a bit drawn-out by the end! I look forward to further opportunities to wear out my collection of Sharpies! How can I be visible as an artist in a saturated art scene? Can I make a living from my work? How can I network even more than I currently do? Even though his works refer a lot to very English contemporary art events such as the Turner Prize or the Nottingham art scene, they can apply to every artist striving to succeed and to be recognized. Shaun Belcher was born in Oxford in 1959. He is currently living in Nottingham and is now a mul-timedia lecturer at Trent University, freelance web designer and practicing digital artist. To see more of his work registered on Saatchi Online visit http://www. shaunbelcher.com 17 B 18 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 19 20 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 21 22 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 23 24 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 25 26 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 27 28 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 29 30 Sarah Blake: Artist’s Statement 31 These drawings are an attempt to think about the connections between the drawn mark, the written word and the space that surrounds them. They are composite images – part note, doodle, scribble, and sketch. The drawings were made in response to what I heard and saw. They function as reminders of some of the talks I listened to that day – the drawings are made up of words and phrases, fragments of diagrams and symbols, often woven together in an intricate surface of pencil and ink marks. The words become marks, and the marks turn into text. It is this relationship between drawing and writing – that I aimed to explore. Making work and then immediately putting it on display was a freeing process. As the day went on I became less and less self-conscious and the drawings, I think, became more playful. For more examples of my work visit sarahblakeartist.tumblr.com. 32 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 33 34 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 35 36 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 37 38 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 39 40 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 41 42 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 43 Robert Shadbolt 45 46 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 47 48 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 49 50 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 51 52 The Symposium 56 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 57 65 58 The Symposium Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 59 60 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 61 69 62 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 6371 64 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 65 73 66 'The Articulate Hand' performance. Image courtesy of Andrew Dawson Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 67 75 68 7 Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2012 69 77