Event Details

A one day conference bringing together practice and perspectives on drawing used as an investigative tool in a range of research areas outside the arts.

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 investigate.

The event is hosted by The Ruskin in collaboration with Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA). The conference theme builds on John Ruskin’s advocacy of drawing as a way of seeing and understating the world. For Ruskin, it was drawing that facilitated close and careful examination of subjects that sensitised the drawer to notice.

In more 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. This event provides an opportunity to share and reflect on examples, alongside a related conference exhibition, Drawn to Investigate.

Conference Programme

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