Philosophy Of Drawing Research Papers (original) (raw)

Drawing is a process by which the mind commits itself to ideas that can only be expressed visually, but is also an embodied form of knowing, crossing distinct areas of inquiry and pedagogy — from arts to humanities and sciences. As this field becomes increasingly heterogeneous, claiming for a multimodal research landscape, stable areas of knowledge production are rare and crossover problems emerge.
The renewed interest on drawing beyond those areas to which it is commonly associated – fine arts, architecture and design – is a symptom of its underlying presence in the various pedagogical, laboratorial and expository contexts: as notations, diagrams, illustrations, gestures, models, methodologies and traces standing for a researched idea or phenomenon.
Nevertheless, its status and roles within the University today are still relatively overlooked, confined to the specific needs of departments, laboratories and classrooms, where its presence tends to go unnoticed. This invisibility is partially explained by drawing’s level of indeterminacy in dealing with ill-structured problems, the common ground of its communication processes and the apparent simplicity of its outcomes.
In organizing this book, we identify the need to counter an analytical urge that only focuses on complex things in order to reduce them to simple equations. In drawing research, we must recognize that sometimes we need to reveal the hidden complexities that are the secret of drawing’s simplicity.
The discrete but systematic use of drawing in such heterogeneous fields as computational sciences, simulating the sets for game programming; in biology and microbiology as illustrations and perceptive tool of direct and microscopic observations; in geography, as visualization of an experiential space; or in journalism as an alternative instrument of reportage – just to pinpoint the tip of the iceberg – is opening new lines of inquiry on its creative, cognitive and communicative aspects. But above all it shows drawing’s conceptual sophistication in problem solving, innovation, learning and expertise.
We believe that the cognitive and expressive processes of drawing in the University can be defined more clearly within a framework that recognizes what all these territories have in common: by confronting its differences, we can also find its common ground.
This publication bears testimony to the emergence of a trend of research regarding the use of drawing in the University as a visual or performative strategy, and its capacity to inform and be informed by its disciplines: from visual arts and design to medicine, from sports to cognitive sciences, from geography to criminology, from engineering to communication sciences, from archeology to biology, from architecture to ethnography. To discuss drawing within the University is to question the distinction between invention and research, arguing for a double movement between both. As Paul Carter (Carter, Paul (2007), “Interest: The Ethics of Invention”. In Barret; Estelle; Bolt Barbara (2007), Practice as Research – Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry. London: I.B.Tauris, pp. 15-26.) put it:

"The condition of invention – the state of being that allows a state of becoming to emerge – is a perception, or recognition, of the ambiguity of appearances. Invention begins when what signifies exceeds its signification – when what means one thing, or conventionally functions in one role, discloses other possibilities (…). In general, a double movement occurs, of decontextualization in which the found elements are rendered strange, and of recontextualization, in which new families of association and structures of meaning are established. This double movement characterizes any conceptual advance." (Carter, 2007: 16)

As a conceptual tool, drawing shares the creative impulse and the main driving forces of research — curiosity, speculation and confrontation between patterns of thought — through explorative, move-testing or hypothesis-testing experiments. Therefore, the contributions to this study emerge from a reflection on both written accounts and studio practices in response to these questions:
- What cross-disciplinary perspectives are open to drawing in a contemporary University?
- How can drawing contribute to an image based research in the University?
- Is there specific visual imagery in scientific practice?
- How can drawing be involved in problem solving?
- What engagements can be imagined between drawing and verbal language?
- How is drawing involved in performance based practices in the University?
- What roles are assigned to drawing in laboratorial and studio contexts?
- How does drawing relate active perception with cognition and creativity?
- How can drawing enhance teaching and learning strategies in the University?

As a result, we noted the recurrence of frameworks and the emergence of core themes within the heterogeneity of contributions, and accordingly divided this book into six parts:
Enhancing Education Through Drawing concerns the impact of drawing as a learning methodology in artistic, design and scientific practice, through innovative strategies and alternative outcomes;
Visual Imagery and Scientific Practice analyses the production and use of sketches, diagrams and illustrations in the context of scientific work, as records of the process of knowledge production;
Creativity, Cognition and Active Perception focuses on the shared circuits between creative and perceptual processes and their instrumental role in discovery, mind shifting and experiential knowledge.
Thinking Drawing in Research establishes a critical and philosophical ground for discussing the role of drawing within the University, focusing on the relationship between research, practice and alternative modes of knowledge, based on subjective, emergent and interdisciplinary approaches.
Modes of Conception: Reports on Practice describes case studies in studio-based research, focusing in the process of invention through drawing and its relationship with concepts such as skill/deskill, know-how and experience.
Acting Through Drawing explores the complex relationships that exist between drawing, performance and performativity, reflecting on the role of drawing as an instruction, an instrument and a record of a performative action.
Intertwined with the papers there are experimental contributions from independent artists and researchers, presented at the Drawing in the University Today Exhibition, curated by Pedro Maia, Cláudia Amandi and Natacha Antão, in the Faculty of Fine Arts and the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto. These works cover practice-led research on a wide range of topics, such as drawing machines, dialogical and collaborative practices, anthropology and cultural memory, medicine and pedagogy, the relationships between image and language, drawing as reportage or performance recording.

Acknowledgement
We are very grateful to all of the authors, whose patience with the process of assembling such a comprehensive review of the field has resulted in a valuable resource in this book.

Paulo Luís Almeida, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto
Miguel Bandeira Duarte, School of Architecture, University of Minho
José Teixeira Barbosa, Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto