Drawing Nowhere
Event as part of 'Tasty' |
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| The representation of three-dimensional objects on paper depends on the acceptance that the drawing surface is to be viewed vertically at eye level and that the lines of the drawing can be read as if they were real lines in real space. This convention has been accepted at least since artists began to use perspective early in the Renaissance and there is earlier evidence of Roman artists using perspective much earlier. The lines on the paper correspond more or less with (what we assume to be) the image on the retina which is interpreted by the perceptual apparatus of the brain. The operation of this process is so strongly ingrained that the range of images which can be read as 'three dimensional' is very large. |  |
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The EICH Gallery at George Street has a security CCTV camera mounted in one corner. It gives a raking diagonal view of the gallery which is displayed on a small monitor in the office When watching the monitor one is aware of visitors moving across and through what one interprets as real space while reflections on the screen, the black and white image, the small size of the screen and its position above eye level all contradict the apparent solidity of what is shown. The project is simple. A drawing will be made on the gallery floor during a short break between exhibitions. It will be made indirectly by the artist who will work in the office viewing the monitor while relaying instructions via a radio to a small team of volunteers who will trace out the drawing on the gallery floor using black paper strips. The volunteers will not know that the lines will eventually represent a chair. |
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The Image on the monitor will show a simple three-dimensional chair as if it were standing within the small volume of the monitor itself, or as if it were traced on the flat surface of the screen. The image on the gallery floor will have to be distorted to allow for perspective in the same way that some markings on roads are stretched so that they read flat when viewed from a car. |
| On the gallery floor the image will seem to be only a network of unrelated lines although it will be made of real materials. It will act as the 'transmitter' of the drawing to the monitor. Although the monitor screen will seem to present an accurate representation this will not exist once the monitor is switched off. The lines on the gallery floor will be removed once the project ends. |  |
Drawing Nowhere - Postscript Date: 18 November 2000 The project was carried out as described but there were additional and unexpected effects: At the mid stage in the process the 'verticals' of the chair back and legs were in place on the gallery floor and up one wall while the 'horizontals' of the back rails, seat frame and stretchers were made by pasting paper strips directly to the monitor. In the gallery the volunteers were unable to see what they had started to 'draw' while in the office a complete chair emerged. |
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 At this stage people moving around in the gallery appeared to pass 'through' the frame of the chair as they stepped across the lines on the gallery floor and 'behind' the lines on the monitor. The reading of the chair image on the monitor was so strong that the spatial facts of the image of the gallery were entirely suppressed. |
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Once the image had been completed on the gallery floor the contradictions between one's knowledge of the space and one's reading of the chair image became even stronger. It was impossible not to believe that when one of the volunteers sat on the 'seat' of the chair he had not become a very small person. |
| What was more unexpected was the way that the same distortions worked in the gallery when the paper strips were viewed from a wide range of positions in the general area of the CCTV camera. Here the belief that a very small person was sitting on a very large chair was again impossible to suppress. The project echoed the perceptual experiments of the American psychologist Adelbert Ames (in the fifties?) and generated some excitement because of the illusion produced. It is planned to repeat and extend the project at other venues. |
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Martyn Chalk |
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