I’ve entitled the drawings in this series Session Drawings because the layers of each drawing arrives at their level of completeness over the course of an arbitrary duration or session. The duration may be dictated by simply deciding that a layer is finished or simply on account of mundane interruptions from everyday life. More than one layer can be finished in a session. However, if one layer is completed and the next layer is left in an unfinished state, that’s how it will remain. Something that I begin one night will not be worked on again on the following morning. When a session is over, it’s on to the next.
I am interested in cycles (natural and unnatural) and the idea of change. We live in a continuous state of flux, changing a little bit every minute of every day. These drawings are a record of that change for me personally. I think about how I might hold a pen one day versus the next, where it hits the surface, and the kinds of marks that are made reflect small but significant traces of a perpetual state of transformation. The point is not about what a final drawing looks like but is about a process whose focus is on the present moment
Session Drawing Animation
The source for the animated work below are the drawings from the Session Drawing series. The titles for this part of the series refers to the drawing from which the animation was derived and which video in the series it is (i.e.—Session Drawing 3V3 is derived from Session Drawing 3 and it is the third video in the series).
The sound comes from tones generated in the key of C major within an 8-octave range. Some represent a single chord while others represent the entire scale. When played in a space simultaneously, they create an evolving, harmonious, ambient soundscape.
Each animation is created by first creating an austere system of rules that must be followed precisely. Rolling dice determines everything with each pip given a numeric value. Through this process, the rolling of dice determines factors such as duration, where a particular image will appear in the composition, etc. This system effectively removes me from determining a final outcome in the work. In this way, the rules act as a proxy for natural phenomena.
Session Drawing 11V1 (Bmin7♭5), 10:00, 2013, sound (headphones recommended)
Session Drawing 10V2 (Emin), 7:00, 2013, sound (headphones recommended)
Session Drawing 3V3, 4:00, 2013, sound (headphones recommended)
Session Drawing 14V4, 1:07, 2013, sound (headphones recommended)
The animation below is a mockup of how Session Drawing videos 11V1, 10V2 and 3V would sound when played simultaneously within a space. A key difference here is that in a gallery setting, the videos are meant to be played asynchronously so that the sound in the space continuously evolves in the space.
Session Drawings 11V1 (Bmin7♭5—10 minutes), 10V2 (Emin—7 minutes), and 3V3 (Gmaj—4 minutes), 21:00, 2013, sound (headphones recommended)