The idea behind these works is to create drawings by collaborating with energies produced by the subject of the work (in this case the ocean). In this way the subject can also be an agent that helps to create the work. I think of this engagement with the agency of elemental forces like the ocean or other life forms (in future works) as a means to subject my own intentions in creating a drawing to a broader set of forces and ecological relations.
For Drawing With Ocean I work with the sounds of the ocean to control the vertical axis of the drawing machine while my voice controls the horizontal axis (for more on how I’m using audio to control the drawing machine see Drawing Song). I have made a number of long scroll works in this series that have been created on paper running through a motorised scrolling mechanism. The final drawing in each case is around 500cm x 72cm.
In the video on the left you see the process of drawing overlaid on footage of the ocean that corresponds to the sounds that are driving the machine. I am using a blending mode that makes the white of the paper transparent revealing both the ocean footage and the black marks of the drawing. On the right I have recorded the completed drawing moving through the scrolling mechanism. You can see that to create the final drawing I have played the same audio through the machine four times, each time with a slightly lighter shade of grey marker. What interests me here is the tension between the reasonably chaotic marks of the ‘original’ drawing and the degree to which those marks can be reproduced by playing back the same audio through the machine. For my tastes there is a very satisfying balance between reproducibility and variation that emerges through this process. You can see that a little more clearly along the top and bottom edges of the detail below.
This iteration Drawing With Ocean came towards the end of a year and a half of experiments in working with the ocean sounds to make drawings. The first works in this series were 100 x 70cm drawings like this one.
In this video I use notch filters to pull out certain frequencies from the ocean sounds, and a chorus created by multi-tracking my voice to create a more continuous line.
After making a number of drawings this way I switched my attention to making drawings with a much shorter duration. The audio that produced these drawings was around one minute (one breath). I then selected certain drawings to repeat by playing the audio back through the machine several times. This was where I really started to explore in more detail the variation of marks that comes from the vagaries of the machine. The six drawings below were all created with the same audio signal. You’ll notice that there is more variation here than in the scroll example above. I put this down to the smaller scale (28 x 35.6cm) and the fact that I was working with a less precise audio interface for the machine.
Next I experimented with using this variation as the source of movement for an animation.
This led to the first overlay video in which each drawing is comprised of a continuous line made with a single breath.