In recent years, there has been increasing investment in developing relationships between art and the sciences through collaborative projects. Residencies, publications and exhibitions are bringing artists and scientists together to look for cross-disciplinary solutions to complex shared problems. Alongside prominent work in digital and media arts, there are a growing number of artists and scientists forging such relationships around graphic practices. Drawing is historically associated with knowledge generation and critical investigation. Today drawing continues to work across the porous boundary between observation and expression, empiricism and invention in a range of investigative practices.

 

Drawing Conversations 3: Drawing Talking to Sciences assesses the potential for drawing to make meaningful contributions to knowledge outside the arts by bringing together examples of drawing used to co-investigate. ‘Sciences’ is used in the most inclusive sense, embracing all forms of thorough investigation, spanning anthropology to physics, conservation to mathematics, forensics to zoology.

 

Hosted by The Ruskin Museum of the Near Future, the theme builds on John Ruskin’s advocacy of drawing as a way of seeing and understating the world and his prescient understanding of the impact of industrialisation on the natural environment. For Ruskin, it was drawing that facilitated close and careful examination of subjects that sensitised the drawer to notice. For instance, his daily practice of drawing enabled him to track and measure changes in weather patterns and air quality.

 

Drawing Conversations 3 presents artworks and papers about contemporary and historical examples of drawing which build relationships with or demonstrate engagement between drawing and the sciences. While not limited to these we are particularly interested in work that addresses

 

• Drawing providing solutions to research problems outside the creative arts

• Innovative graphic approaches, technologies or languages adapted to current science challenges

• Drawing as an alert practice of noticing in science, as measurement, index, catalogue or document that communicates,    perhaps where other technologies fail. 

• How artists develop new approaches to drawing that enable them to notice and record the previously unnoticed.

• Drawing as a tool for synthesizing ideas and data from different disciplines

• Parallels between methods of drawing and activity in other fields of research

• The role of drawing in enhancing or extending current scientific fieldwork practices.

• How drawing adapts to new and challenging natural and non-natural environments

• Drawing which investigates new or changing human practices, behaviours or beliefs.

• Entanglements and symbiotic relationships between  drawing and ecology

• How does drawing enable us to speculate and plan for future ecologies and lifeways?

​

 

Conference Schedule

​

9.30-10 –Coffee and registration, time to view the exhibition

 

10.00 – Welcome and Introduction: Sarah Casey

Drawing Conversations, Jill Journeaux, Director and co-founder Drawing Conversations

The Ruskin, Sandra Kemp, Director the Ruskin  

​

10.20 Keynote: Emma Stibbon, Drawing: Soundings and Resonance followed by Q&A with Gerry Davies

​

Conversation 1: Drawing the body

​

11-11.15 Joanne MacDonald: Drawing in Anatomy

​

11.20-. 11. 35 Julia Midgley: Drawing a Record – lines of engagement

​

11.40- 11.50 Questions

​

11.50 -12.00 Short comfort break

​

Conversation 2: Engaging public and patients

​

12.00 – 12.15 Daksha Patel: A case study using drawing in the context of Parkinson’s disease

​

12.20-12.35 Louise Ann Wilson: Drawing-it-Out: Collaborative drawing as a tool in art-based ethnographic and social-science practice and research

​

12.40 -12.50 Questions

​

12.50 – 13.45 Lunch & time to view exhibitions

 

Conversation 3: Measuring the world

 

13.45-14.00. Richard Talbot: Just What is It?

 

14.05 -14.20 Katarina Andjelkovic: Genealogies of interactivity from panorama drawings to panoramic photography

 

14.25 – 14.35: Peter Matthews: A creative collaboration with marine science

 

14.40 - 14.50 Jennie Speirs Grant: Drawing and the Art of Biosemiotics

 

14.55 – 15.10 Questions

 

15.10 - 15.30 Coffee break

​

Conversation 4: The Mediated Image

​

15.30- 15.40 Johanna Love:  Drawing Dust

​

15.45- 15.55:  Hondartza Fraga: Drawing the Cassini Raw Images of Saturn

​

16.00 -16.10 Lesley Hicks: Seer and Seen: Drawing from Webcams

​

16.15: Questions

​

16.30 Discussion: Emerging questions and issues

​

16.50 - 17.00 Closing remarks and observations

 

​

Conference exhibition : Drawn to Investigate 10th -17th January The Ruskin, Lancaster University,

10-4, Monday - Friday.

​

The exhibition looks at the potential of drawing as an investigative tool to make meaningful contributions to knowledge outside the arts. Curated from an international open call, it brings together a range of examples of contemporary drawing with a relationship to ‘scientific’ research in contexts around the world.  ‘Science’ is used in the most inclusive sense, embracing all forms of thorough investigation, spanning archaeology to astrophysics and anatomy. Drawing is historically associated with knowledge generation and critical investigation in the sciences. Today, art-science collaboration has become a burgeoning area of interdisciplinary research. The exhibition take a timely look at how drawing today continues to work across the porous boundary between observation and expression, empiricism and invention in a range of investigative practices. This approach builds on John Ruskin’s advocacy of drawing as a way of seeing and understating the world and his prescient understanding of the impact of industrialisation on the natural environment.  

 

Artists include: Hondartza Fraga,  Peter Matthews, Jennie Spiers-Grant, Johanna Love, Lesley Hicks, Doris Rohr, Stefan Gant, Dara Rigal, Gemma Anderson, Emma Hunter, Daksha Patel, Julia Midgley, Annalise Rees, Jan Hogan, Vanessa Lucieer, Richard Talbot , Emma Stibbon.

​

An exhibition  catalogue  is available.

​

​

Directions to the event

​

The exhibition and conference take place at The Ruskin, on Lancaster University campus.

Maps and directions to campus can be accessed here>>

​

​

​

For more information about the conference or exhibition please email the organizers:  g.davies@lancaster.ac.uk  and sarah.casey@lancaster.ac.uk

 

​

 

​