Research Paper

Studying the relationships between artist, artwork and audience of how they influence each other.

I enjoy seeing things from two or even more different perspective because this makes me think in boarder view and often discover new thoughts. And therefore when I make art I tend to think from the artist’s point of view and audiences’.  That makes me wonder the relationship more because I get so confused of who is leading who and the importance of the roles. Artist is the creator of the artwork and therefore audience is the receiver from the artwork, it seems to be very simple and make perfect sense that artist has control over the audience but this is so not true and naïve.  

When I was younger, I drew my own experience, telling my stories to people, when people asked for the ideas of the drawing behind I was quite happy to explain it and I thought audience has no influence on my choice of building my ideas or whatsoever. Drawing was personal and a way to record my memory, at the same time I felt contradicted because I secretly knew that I cared what people thought an somehow wanted to impress them. Viewers were important because I would never hide my drawing underneath my bed and was keen to exhibit in public, although I refused to draw things simply look beautiful, the meaning of the artwork is still controlled by me but the presentation of how it looks like often influenced by other people. I began practising my technical skills, technique is a very objective issue in art practice and therefore it gains people’s approval. So, does it mean the whole purpose of my drawing is to please others? In other words I was totally controlled by viewers?  Hence, I feel the need to explore the influences between artist and, artwork and viewers.

According of “The Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes, a French literary critic, he argues against traditional literary criticism's practice of incorporating the intentions and biographical context of an author in an interpretation of a text, and instead argues that writing and creator are unrelated. In other words this statement suggested audience has their own right or feeling about the artwork itself and whatever meaning the artist meant to give is not important anymore. This sounds sensible in many ways because as a viewer we don’t usually know the artist’s background and it is almost impossible to know the exact story anyway because all individual’s experience is so different.  On top of that, viewers have to right to choose viewing an artwork or not, this preference can not be influenced by the artist or artwork. It is a bit like beef curry wouldn’t fit everyone’s taste but that doesn’t mean it is not nice.  One of the purposes of an artwork is for people to view it, it also means that the viewers are somehow the market of the artwork so some artists might want to please them in order to get compliment. This suggested that instead of artist has the control of the viewers; it might be the other way round. 

I believe that most artists have the awareness of what people usually like or how to “fool” them around, the response of the audience sometimes is the idea of the whole artwork. Obviously things don’t always go the way you wanted to be, in reality, a lot of viewers ignore most artwork when they walk along the museum,  they still have the right to choose so artists don’t really have control of them. Viewers mean everyone who get to see the artwork, all individual is different and it is not wise to say a person can take control of all individual because people is intelligent enough to have their own choice. But what I believe artist can do is to make the biggest effort of gaining people’s attention, for example a big scale of painting catches people’s attention because it shows up in our vision so you won’t miss it. A thing that is big has the natural power of awareness, and you almost have to stop and stand back in order to appreciate, it offers people an interesting view. I have also done an experiment about sizing, in my workshop, I asked participants to draw exactly the same drawing on two pieces of paper, one in A2 and one in A6. I was keen to find out how they felt about drawing in these two different sizes and viewing of them. It becomes an issue of what determines the size of the paper, is it the subject matter, the composition or simply the mood? To me it is about the presentation I want it to be, this year I have been working in small scale mainly, because it is sort of restricted by some limitation. I am working on a device called Zoetrope, it is a Victorian toy that has a cylinder with a rotatable base, you can see moving images illusion by turning the base from the slit of the cylinder. Small drawings need discovery from audience and therefore it is less noticeable objectively, however it is more intimate than big ones because the audience would have to stand close to the drawing and it is something you feel like you want to keep and hang it at your bedroom or look at it everyday. Whereas big ones you will prefer to see in gallery space because it seems to be the place it is meant to be.  Obviously this statement isn’t always true, for instance, a 50 inch canvas hangs on the wall of a restaurant people would or wouldn’t pay attention to it, and even when they do the perception to the painting would not be the same as being in the gallery because it becomes an ornament of the restaurant rather than a piece of art on its own. More importantly, people are there to eat so it makes perfect sense that they care about the food a lot more than the art in the restaurant. This suggests that the engagement between the artwork and the viewers can be altered by so many different things, more than purely the intention by the artist/the quality of the artwork.  

I was desperate to find out a solution of interacting with viewers and I am aware that I don’t want to resign the control of the meaning or the way it presents of my art to the viewers. I decided to keep thinking in two perspective; artist and viewer. I want to explore a new way of presentation that needs viewers’ participation to complete the artwork. Firstly because any interactive exhibit tends to catch people’s attention more, secondly I wanted to break the boundary of drawings in frame. Zoetrope is the starting point of my entire concept in this year. Initially I was planning to make six of them with sequence drawings in it. It means the Zoetrope is somehow dominated the spread of the drawings due to the restriction on the size and the accuracy needed. The idea comes from my previous practice of two dimensional drawings on paper, I felt like I was ready to take up some challenge on doing something new and I wanted to break the boundary of what drawing can visually do, instead of displaying the still images on piece of paper in frame, I wanted to explore alternative. What makes it more interesting is that zoetrope gives surprise to viewers because the moving effect looks very different from the still images and therefore it provides two ways of looking.

Further Development

After all the studies I decided to name my project Role-Playing. In Wikipedia Role-playing refers to the changing of one's behaviour to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role. While the Oxford English Dictionary defines role-playing as "the changing of one's behaviour to fulfill a social role"^, the term is used more loosely in three senses:

• To refer to the playing of roles generally such as in a theatre, or educational setting;
• To refer to taking a role of an existing character or person and acting it out with a partner taking someone else's role, often involving different genres of practice;
• To refer to a wide range of games including role-playing video game, play-by-mail games and more.

 It suits the thought of drawing from different perspective and gives the clue to the viewers quite subtly.

Well done!

But that is not the end of story, suddenly I asked myself is Zoetrope important anymore? Would I still get the same outcome if I were drawing still images? 

At the very beginning of the MA course I was keen to change the way I worked because I felt like I have been working safely on paper for so long, I was so so so familiar with the medium and up to a point that I had to abandon it in order to move on. Trying to work in moving images was definitely a challenge yet success to me, I think the big difference in between is the appearance of the artwork. I used to work in large scale and therefore viewers would have seen the drawing once they entered the exhibition space, for the Zoetrope you need to stand closer and follow some instruction to view the images, it doesn't look so appealing on its own and needs discovery from viewers.
Once you are viewing the moving effect it will give you surprises, this interaction is fascinating and triggered me to work a piece evoking that moment. I took pictures of viewers while they were spinning the Zoetrope in the Interim Show at the National Gallery, quickly I have the desire to work this aspect; draw the viewers from the picture I took. I didn't realise this was coming from the invigilator's point of view until I had a tutorial yesterday.
I don't think I would come up with any of these thoughts if I didn't start off with Zoetrope but what I am questioning myself is that the ideas right now seem to overwhelm the Zoetrope and it becomes the supplement to the artwork rather than controlling, and that I don't know if it is a good thing. As I somehow think that if I am not using Zoetrope I can still carry on with the "Role-Playing" idea just by drawing still images from different directions.
However, Zoetrope in this project is like the sauce for cooking, you can still have the meal without it but would be so much nicer and almost like the essence of the entire meal. I was afraid that the sauce had too strong flavour that would cover the taste of meat or the flavour and the meat didn't go well together, I wanted the sauce to be supplement that can bring out/enhance the taste of the meal into something fantastic and extraordinary.

Plans

OK I believe I have come to a point which I feel confident and excited to start working in, the whole project has to be done by the end of August which is 5 and a half month, therefore I have to be quite realistic about the amount of drawings I am going to do.

I decided to make 4 Zoetropes (done one already) and one large drawing (possibly 2.5m x 5m or even bigger) by pencil on paper.
The first one that I have already done is a human portrait transforming into a beast, this beginning drawn from my feeling/experience/somewhere inside my mind, therefore it is coming from the artist's view which I always did (actually most artists do). Now, I want to change the direction of depicting myself, it is still about semi-autobiography but instead of speaking from my point of view, I want to put myself as an object in the drawing too. The next drawing I am going to do is about the process of me drawing (the image shows at the last 2 entries) but in that picture I was drawing from my (the artist) eye level so the hands were what I see myself drawing, which is no good. I decided to photograph my hands again but placing the camera in front of the hands, that direction is the poser's(Object) eye level so the drawing would be like speaking from the poser.
For the other two Zoetropes I want to speak from the invigilator and the Zoetrope (content)'s view. It is almost like depicting my art from the third person and placing myself into the drawing as an object, it is so interesting and the ongoing slots is linking all the artwork together. For the large drawing on paper I am going to use the viewers' point of view to visit my studio space and capture of moment of myself drawing, that instantly invited the audience to study the drawing.

Artist, Poser, Content, Invigilator, Viewer. They are all my roles, I found it interesting to draw from directions other than the artist:-

Artist has the freedom to drag whatever subject matter into art like if he were dominated the other people, and I decided to have moving images. 

Poser would get to watch the artist's hand/working in progress without liberty.

Invigilator would get to watch out the exhibition and viewers without liberty.

Content would be asked to watch from viewers without liberty.

Viewers have the freedom to watch or not watch the artwork. 

Which means that artists are not so controlling. To catch viewers' attention involves techniques, and perhaps that is the reason I want to do a large piece from the viewers' point of view. I have invigilated my own show before and I am sort of aware of viewers' response, people usually like to take pictures and step really close to look at the details, or those who didn't have interest at all would walk away looking oblivious. All these reactions would go into the large drawing, so it is not only speaking from viewers' mind but also drawing them from a fairly realistic way.

My Trip to Netherland

I spent the last couple of days to Holland for a mini break and visited Van Gogh Museum and Escher in Het Paleis, it was the first time for me to view Mauk Escher's art and I was well excited by it.
Escher has so many master pieces, even for people who has not art educated would have seen his drawings and sort of remembered it because of the distinctiveness and odd composition. I have to say he is one of the most influential artists to my drawings and definitely someone I am so in awe.

Looking at Escher's drawing is like reading his experiments, he put his imagination and extraordinary thoughts about infinity, recursion, maths and ongoing sequence practice onto piece of wood and printed it off onto paper. They were recreations of everyday objects carried out by countless of studies in forms, shape, angles etc, in other words they are drawings that drawn by his brain whereas I am constantly trying to place myself into the drawing.
There are many similarities between Eshcer's work and mine but I never intended to follow his thoughts. Upon the first glance, the pencil colour of black and white and the detail of the content quite naturally evoked people of Escher, and the sequence drawings and transformation connected to Escher's metamorphosis. The big differences are that he was doing the transform systematically in very accurate calculation and in pattern, it was changing from one object/form to another which involved so many studies of shapes. Mine one, on the other hand was so simplifier because I was changing human face into beast.

My second sequence drawing idea looks even more similar to Escher's Drawing Hands,  I have been looking at it for so long and even thought about abandoning it because it looks unoriginal. But after my tutorial with Michael I have a click in my mind.

Escher was an artist who used drawing to visualise his studies/ feelings/whatever, it was always quite self-center, in fact most artists are the same. And what I am interested to do is to look at my own drawing from a completely different direction and try to draw from that direction.
The drawing above recorded the process of myself drawing, and that angle of eye level is exactly the one when I do my drawing, in other words I was drawing my drawing hands from the artist's view (and that is what Escher was doing) and I think what I could do is to change the direction of viewing my hands so the whole image would change completely.
To draw from another person's view is interesting because it is almost like looking at someone else's work but at the same time I am placing myself into the drawing. So as well as being the artist, I am also the observer of the artwork and the exhibition. 
 

Unit 2 Proposal

Unit 2 Abstract Proposal

Zoetrope is the starting point of all my concept in this year. Initially I was planning to make six of them with sequence drawings in it. It means the Zoetrope is somehow dominated the spread of the drawings due to the restriction on the size and the accuracy needed. The idea comes from my previous practice of two dimensional drawings on paper, I felt like I was ready to take up some challenge on doing something new and I wanted to break the boundary of what drawing can visually do, instead of displaying the still images on piece of paper in frame, I wanted to explore alternative. The content of the drawing and the device has become a concern to me because I found it quite hard to connect the two and based on the technical restriction of Zoetrope given I did a lot of research and studies to explore the practice.

The materials I used to build Zoetrope are aluminum and wood, and they come in certain size which mean that I have to be quite realistic when making a Zoetrope, they will come in relatively small size comparing to my previous practice. And because my sequence drawings will involve a lot of slots and therefore I will have to work in very small scale, this contrasts to my earlier practice and I found it difficult. Hence, I spent a lot of time studying the importance of size and changed my plan slightly. I feel like working in very small drawing is placing yourself out of the drawing like if you were drawing through a minimising lens or telling your experience as a third person, whereas drawing in very large scale you are in it.  This is interesting because I didn’t know how much I enjoyed drawing on massive paper until I worked in small ones and I feel the need to maintain both of them because I want the audience to feel the difference. Therefore instead of making six Zoetropes I will make three and I will draw in large scale on massive paper that connects to the Zoetropes.

I started with drawing portraiture of my boyfriend and transformed him into monkey for the first Zoetrope which I feel quite successful in general because the moving images effect showed and the transformation was interesting and met my initial idea. “Wheel of life” was the very beginning thought for Zoetrope and I spent a lot of time documenting and thinking the connection between myself and Zoetrope. I came up with the idea of semi-autobiography, drawing was always seen as a way to record my experience and I tended to draw things that I found worth to memorise and therefore I thought of drawing of my work experience or other special things happened to me and presented it a bit like a short animation. However, after completed the portraiture of my boyfriend I realised drawing is more than a way to record and the process of drawing is an experience already. And because drawing has become part of me since young, I have a strong desire to draw myself drawing. This is a recursion that enchoes to Zoetrope, I want to create drawings that connects to the next one that almost like a never end slot.

My next sequence drawing will be 22 slots of my hands drawing and erasing using rubber. This is my study piece that explains my thought.  

I used my strength of photorealism drawing skills plus the left over rubber bit to create the illusion, it is almost like revisiting the time when I drew the portraiture and gives the viewers an idea of the progress of drawing. This sort of comes from some opinion by my classmates, when we had a crit about the interim show some of them suggested my experiment study of portraiture was more interesting than the Zoetrope, which they are meant to be supportive material for the device (and that comment upset me slightly..) then one of my classmates comforted me and said viewers are very often  more interested in the progress of making the artwork rather than the finish master piece, because people are naturally curious about how things were made. Which I agree because it is a way to explore or analyse things through concrete evidence, and I want to use this evidence to draw more interest to my next drawing.  I always sit down when I draw and placed the paper on the desk or drawing board if I were outside therefore the image you see really is the sight of my actual drawing hands.

I must say M C Escher has an influence on me, especially his famous drawing “Drawing Hands”, I really enjoy the paradox he created that makes impossible possible, it makes people want to study the drawing for so long, not only the detail, but the content and the logic or mathematical impossible. Escher created recursion in stillness by using pencil and experiment, which seems so similar to my practice, but I believe the subject matter that I explore is different from him. I am going to visit the Esther Museum next week and will do an update on my thoughts again.