Sounding Out: Performance drawing in response to the outside environment

My enquiry focuses on how a drawing, when made in response to the outside environment, might be conditioned by that environment, and in turn how that environment might be influenced by that drawing. Examination of texts by, among others, Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty and Baudelaire have contributed towards understanding ideas about humankind’s physical memory of landscape, phenomenological experience in relation to the outside space, and ideas concerning the interaction between the practitioner and the outside space.
Four key issues related to drawing are explored in this research (each is the subject of a chapter in the thesis). Firstly, the practitioner’s stance in the process of drawing is examined, in particular the practitioner’s gesture, which mimics the form of the subject, and performs the subject into being. The practitioner’s position is addressed in relation to how the gaze of the other fashions that position into a performance. Secondly, ‘movement’ is identified as a crucial material component of the process of performance drawing. Movement’s capacity to energise the work, stimulate engagement with the subject, and promote the continual development of ideas is also investigated. Thirdly, a number of interpretations of the outside environment established by individuals who work in different professions are examined. These different readings of place identify ‘signs’ as conditioning the character of place, and as being read by passers-by as directions through place, thereby revealing an interaction between place and humankind. Fourthly, while exploring how to performance draw in direct response to place, the methodology is developed through three stages. The traditional mark-making onto paper was found to keep a distance between the practitioner (observer) and the subject (the environment). The mark-making transferred onto the outside environment was found to retain a distance, held by the tool, between the subject and practitioner. And the practitioner by using her body and voice was found to bridge the space between subject and self. The drawing with sound methodology was found to map, signal, and measure place in direct relation to practitioner, while also revealing an interactive conditioning between place and practitioner, through sonic reflection and resonance. Critical analysis and documentation of findings concerning the practical work are interspersed throughout the written text, and a DVD of audiovisual documentation of practical works is also included as an attachment to the written thesis.