Three views from a Eurostar window

On a recent trip from Paris to London on the Eurostar, I was mesmerised by the miles and miles of flat, banal landscape across the middle of France. Speeding past this tedious scenery at the spectacular pace of 185 mph felt both futuristic and mind-numbingly dull at the same time.

This collision of awe and boredom inspired three small drawings.

Eurostar landscape 1

28 x 19 cm

pencil on paper

Eurostar landscape 2

28 x 19 cm

pencil on paper

Eurostar landscape 3

28 x 19 cm

pencil on paper

Strength in numbers

Repetition as a strategy for making art

A painter friend of mine once told me, “If you can’t make it good, make it big. And if you can’t make it big, make it red.”

Absurd, right? I don’t think he was completely serious, but there are some artists who do pretty well following an approach as simple as this. However if I look beyond the absurdity of my friend’s suggestion, I'm left with a piece of advice that is in fact a strategy for making art. Maybe it’s not the best strategy, but it’s a strategy nevertheless.

Every piece of art is guided by a making-strategy of some sort; an approach or guiding principle that informs the making of the work in a fundamental way. All artists employ a range of making-strategies in the creation of their work (consciously or not). Make it big. Make it small. Make it fast. Take your time. Use authentic traditional materials. Use stuff from the hardware store. Find materials that resonate with personal meaning. Draw on beautiful clean paper. Draw on scraps of paper lying in the studio. And so on.

So what is a making-strategy good for? And why is it important to spend time thinking about the ways different making-strategies are used? Because these strategies hold some of the clues that allow us to understand how to connect the experience of a piece of art to our lives. Making-strategies are a way into a work as both an artist and a viewer, and they provide us with a point of departure to begin a conversation with the work.

To look at making-strategies I think it is helpful to first think about the kinds of questions that art takes on. Painting, drawing and sculpture (and all other forms of visual and performing art) are very good at helping us answer particular kinds of questions. Very often people mistakenly assume that the subject of a painting or drawing are the things represented in the image (the figures, the landscape, the still life objects, etc). This isn’t the case. The subject of a work of art is the question that the piece is seeking to answer. The reason the work exists in the first place is, fundamentally, to try to answer a particular question. Artwork that is generated in the absence of an underlying question remains disconnected from our emotional register, and our response to these works often feels shallow and empty.

Some subjects (i.e. questions) are better addressed through art than through other modes of exploration, research and inquiry. Questions of feeling, relationship, uncertainty, emotion, etc, are better suited to artistic rather than scientific exploration. This is because painting, drawing, sculpture, etc are “technologies” brilliantly suited to answering particular kinds of questions. No other technology is as suited to bringing both intellectual and emotional exploration together in the service of answering particular questions as painting, drawing or sculpture are. Art can go where science cannot.

The strategy for making a work is therefore informed by the question the work is seeking to answer. Different questions will, by their nature, inspire different making-strategies. If the question is purely about creating visual impact in the mind of the viewer, then my friend's simple strategy of “make it big or make it red” is not a bad place to start. But if the question is more nuanced and potentially lasting than mere visual impact, then the making-strategy needs to be adjusted accordingly.

Repetition is one such making-strategy. Perhaps it’s the ex-animator in me, or my degree in printmaking, but I gravitate to work that uses multiple images and repetition as an exploratory approach. Whether the goal is to create thousands of temporally linked animation drawings, a series of fifty nearly identical prints, a triptych of one-off pencil drawings, or a series of sketches all linked by colour or common form, I find the use of multiple images immediately captivating.

There are a number of questions for which repetition is a great strategic jumping-off point. Here are five and a few examples of how artists have used repetition as a making-strategy to try to address them.

1. A question of time. (What’s the difference?)

Noticing change is how we tell time. Recording the effects of change and evolution is a way to track a sense of progression. Growing and dying are transformative conditions that can be spotted and amplified through the use of repetition. The changes can be obvious and act as sort of stills from a time-lapse film. Sometimes the changes being explored through art are subtle and largely undetectable from our normal day-to-day experience because what is changing is not the physical exterior of something or someone, but an interior world. When confronted with a series of (nearly) identical images, a question gets posited in our mind about the difference that is being recorded. The images may look the same, but they aren’t really the same. Equipped with this experience, we can turn to our lives and look at things that look the same as before, but wonder what is different that our eyes can’t detect.

Dryden Goodwin

Sustained Endeavour

(25 drawings of the same photograph of Sir Steve Redgrave - pencil on paper on video) 2006

2. A question of story (What happens next?)

Beginnings, middles, and ends are all part of how we construct our understanding of what is happening in our lives. This is why novels and films are such great mediums for dealing with questions of story. I think we find them easy to relate to because this is fundamentally how we explain the story of our own experience to ourselves. Drawings and paintings struggle a bit with narrative depiction, but comic books and animation of course transcend this limitation by using film or the convention of panels on a printed page as the display mechanism for drawings that operate chronologically.

But repetition can be used as an approach in painting and drawing to depict a story through a series of sequentially associated images held together by temporal logic; this happened first, and then this happened next. This use of repetition can instil a sense of plot progression where things develop through a kind of narrative. But it also assists our reading of images by offering a way into the work that goes beyond the surface image and activates our natural desire to explain things through stories.

Joseph Beuys

Untitled

(Pencil on four sheets of paper on painted wood panel) 1947 and 1970s

3. A question of movement (What’s happening?)

Our concept of space is constructed based on our ability to physically engage with the three-dimensional world around us. Movement through space helps us translate the two dimensional world of colours and shapes into a three dimensional experience. More than early cinematographers, it was Eduard Muybridge who helped us understand how things move through space. His pioneering work in photographing people and animals in motion has been scrutinised by generations of animators and artists. By stopping motion in its tracks, people suddenly had access to a world of information that was taking place in front of them every day but never had access to. The evidence of his influence can be seen in a variety of places from Walt Disney to Francis Bacon.

But today, in a post-Futurist, post-Modern, post-Avatar world, movement is explored not as the serious subject that is was in the 20^th century, but very often with humour and a kind of knowing irony. Repetition and sequence today are tools for transforming authentic movement into something magical.

Robin Rhode

He Got Game

(Six in a series of twelve photographs - C-prints) 2001

4. A question of focus (What’s important?)

Every parent (and every successful politician or business leader for that matter) eventually learns a very simple truth about effective communication: if you want to get your point across, you have to say it more than once. Very often, you need to say things again and again. And sometimes again. And if the idea you want to share is in any way subtle, you often need to say things lots of times in order to encourage your audience to come to the idea in a way that goes beyond mere communication and reaches a deeper and more personal level of engagement. Communication managers inside large corporations know this basic rule as well, yet ironically, a common refrain that can be heard in board rooms and management meetings around the world is, “But surely they must know what is going on, I sent them an email!”. And what parent hasn’t said (shouted?) the classic line, “How many times do I have to tell you to...”?

We all know from experience that getting even simple ideas across to other people isn’t so simple. A single image on its own (like the lone corporate email) needs to work very, very hard to bring our attention to a particular detail in the work or the message. Subtle differences or similarities between specific pictorial elements or between our conceptual expectations and what is depicted in the picture will not get into our mind or our heart without help.

But ideas can be amplified through repetition. Repetition is a way to share the curiosity of the artist and can turn a subtle background issue into the main focus of the work. Repetition can help to direct attention to the things that are most important about the work and can break down the natural information barriers that we have built around us. It is a way to turn a mere portrait or landscape into an exploration of preconceptions about notions of beauty, power, oppression, etc.

Marlene Dumas:

From Measuring Your Own Grave exhibition at MOCA

(Black ink on paper) 2009

5. A question of commitment (What’s going on inside?)

Imagine a simple drawing of a flower hanging on a white wall. Then imagine ten drawings of the same flower. Now imagine the wall covered in hundreds or even thousands of drawings of a flower. Our concept of the flower changes as more images are added to the mix. As more flowers are added, each individual flower becomes simultaneously less and more significant. Our sense of the importance of the individual image shifts and we look past the marks of the single image and instead are confronted by the impact created when images work in groups. Sometimes a group of images feels like a chorus singing together, and sometimes a group of images can feel like a gang looking to assault their next victim. But there is strength in numbers.

For some artists, drawing or painting is a kind of mantra or chant to oneself. The act of making is almost musical wherein the artist becomes a drummer repeating a rhythmic beat of meaningful gestures. The mantra can be a repetition of marks, colours, objects, and/or forms. Using repetition in this way means that the individual drawing/painting/sculpture is not significant on its own. Each individual execution is simply one small part of a larger and more significant process of obsessive repetition. Obsessive acts can be both mysterious and frightening, and standing in the presence of the products of a repetitive obsessive act can be powerful. It raises questions of intent as our mind flicks between looking at the work itself and imagining the repetitive process that the artist went through to create it. This kind of mantra, spoken over and over through something as simple as mark making, creates work that is often much greater than the sum of the individual parts.

Magdalena Abakanowicz

From the cycle Corps

(Charcoal on paper) 1996

Crowd

(Standing figures in 22 parts - Burlap and synthetic resin) 1986 - 1987

The Big Realisation: Part 3

A few facts and a few questions

My research into peak oil has thrown up some other facts and questions that felt quite alarming to me. Here are five that really made me sit up and take notice.

1. The link between discovery and production

The peak for discovery of new oil tends to happen 30 years ahead of the peak for production. For example, in the US, the discovery of new oil peaked in the 1930’s. Production in the US then peaked in the 1970’s at 11.3 mb/day. Today, US domestic production is at 6 mb/day and falling.

On the global level, worldwide discoveries peaked in the 1960’s with Alaska and the North Sea. Although small discoveries of oil are still being made each year, none of them have the capacity to keep pace with world oil demand which is estimated to go from 80 mb/day today to 120 mb/day by 2025. Production must eventually mirror discovery. This puts the Peak Oil point at anywhere between 2006-2016. Worldwide production has managed to keep pace with demand because of large reserves. As these reserves diminish, production will fall with no ability to “open the tap wider”.

Peak Oil is the moment when world demand exceeds supply. Without new discoveries of large sources of oil, the demand for oil will eventually outstrip supply. If there is no ability to access surplus supply in the system, the cost will increase with no mechanism to control it other than changing the demand.

2. The US influence

We all know that the US is the biggest user of world resources. In oil terms, the US consumes almost 25% of global oil demand; about 20 million barrels a day of a total 80 million barrels a day used. 5 million barrels a day come from Middle East oil producing sources (OPEC). If the US wanted to eliminate the need for those 5 million barrels a day, the US government could legislate an increase in fuel efficiency of all cars produced in America by only 2.7 mpg. But instead, the US government subsidises the growth of the SUV market in America from a 2% market share of all automobiles sold in the US in 1975 to 24% in 2003. Meanwhile, fuel efficiency averages were allowed to fall in the period from 1987 to 2001 from an average of 26.2 mpg to 24.4 mpg.

The facts suggest that the USA (and other industrialised nations) are taking active steps to accelerate our inevitable trajectory toward a world without cheap oil. Meanwhile, burning oil at present rates is proven to cause other environmental and economic turmoil.

3. The growth imperative

Our economy, and the currency values within it, is debt-based and is predicated on it’s ability to grow. Most money in the system is loaned into existence by banks and is thus based on a debt implying a commitment to pay the interest on the loan. Without growth, new money will not be created to pay the interest on the existing loans. It is impossible to achieve a static or controllably contracting economy with a debt-based currency. Slowing down is not an option.

This simple economic fact places us in a difficult position with regard to both peak oil and climate change. Both of these challenges encourage us to cut back and do less. But our economic system is set up to encourage growth and consumption. We are locked in a system that means that we need to keep the engine running faster- at all costs.

4. “They” won’t let this happen – “something” will save the day

The future of energy is most likely going to be a patchwork landscape made up of a variety of sources and supplies. Renewables such as solar, hydro, tidal, wind, geothermal, etc will all play a part. Other technologies (biomass, hydrogen, etc) will also play a role. And the difficulty of the situation will force many people to rethink their position on energy sources from things that have obvious negative consequences such as nuclear and coal. But nothing will replace oil in terms of its ease of use and flexibility.

The problem is that after years of running at full speed toward eventual oil depletion, and possible environmental disaster, there is potentially very little time to develop and implement these alternatives on a scale that is required to satisfy current demand for power. Additionally, many of the alternatives are great at doing things like producing electricity on a large scale, but less good at powering things like cars and planes. If we are relying on alternatives and other new ideas to save us from real hardship, as many of my friends confidently insist, there is very little evidence that things are on the right track.

Oil depletion and climate change are global problems that will require global solutions. However, corporations, and the leaders within them, have evolved in a system of competition where the aim is to be, ideally, the one and only choice of consumers. Oil was that sort of resource. But to see alternative energy sources as competing against each other for market supremacy misses the point. And since there can be no single winner in the energy provision of the future, investment is slow in coming, and no immediate solutions will be available when the shock wave of peak oil hits.

5. The insurance disaster waiting to happen

Losses from natural disasters has been increasing at a rate of about 10% per year for nearly 40 years. Forget about how you feel about loss of species or the destruction of coral reefs, the insurance industry is based on a system that, in the face of the potential disasters caused by global warming, could collapse under some, entirely imaginable, circumstances.

The insurance industry relies on the collection of claims data from the past to underwrite the present for the risks of the future. This works fine if the basic premise of the system never changes. But in a world where the frequency and severity of natural catastrophes are on the rise, there is an increase in the possibility for unmanageable claims to be placed on the industry. Premiums in the insurance industry represent 10% of the global economy. The insurance industry could be devastated by one or two major weather events in large cities, which would have a domino effect across the finance industry bringing other investments vehicles and hedge funds down with it.

A large proportion of our future finances (pensions, investments) are tied up in the insurance industry. Leaders in the industry are starting to state openly that the industry is at risk because of disasters caused by the effects of global warming which could easily exceed the money that is held in reserve to cover catastrophic losses.

If the situation is anywhere near as dire as many industry experts suggest, the big question is: What are businesses and governments doing about it? Let’s assume that everyone in business is fully aware of the ecological and economic risks associated with the collision between global warming and oil depletion. Why don’t we hear more about this issue? How are organisations preparing for the future?

Many of the people writing on this subject talk about Peak Oil and the change from a supply that exceeds demand to a supply that is out-stripped by demand. But this is not the peak we should be worried about. We should be more worried about the confidence peak. We should be very anxious about moment that oil traders and analysts in the financial industry flip from thinking that we live in a world of growing supplies of oil to a world of shrinking ones. This is the moment – The Big Realisation – that we need to be in fear of because this is the moment that prices will spike and panic buying will ensue. This will most likely be followed by a period of volatile price fluctuations as decreases in demand bring the price down again, but the damage to the economy will be lasing and difficult to overcome in the short term.

When will this realisation happen? No one can say for sure, but evidence suggests that the confidence in the markets in the stability of the price of oil is held there artificially by a combination misinformation and short-term thinking.

The shift from an oil-based way of life to a post-oil world will be potentially massive for people – unless people start to prepare now. Governments and organisations need to see this challenge as a vast change management programme that will take decades to rollout. People inside organisations need to start to be encouraged to imagine what a post-oil company will look like.

• What capabilities will organisations need to have in the future if the effects of Peak Oil become more severe?
• Is the corporate response to Peak Oil something that is best addressed from the top-down or bottom-up? Or both?
• What can organisations do today to start to prepare attitudes, capabilities, and structures?
• What does a post-oil business look like? How do they stay competitive?
• What is the CBI, DTI, IoD doing to prepare businesses for this change?
• What are the conditions for success?
• What is the appropriate action to take at this stage? What are the conditions for escalation to another phase of response? What does the response escalation path look like?
• How do international businesses that are headquartered in London pull together to align approaches and responses to Peak Oil?

Bird skull

Over the years I have gathered a small collection of animal skulls found while walking in places like Wales and Crete. Here are a few simple drawings of a small and delicate bird skull. The actual skull is about 6cm long and 3cm wide.

Bird skull no. 1
28 x 19 cm
pen and watercolour on paper

Bird skull no. 2
28 x 19 cm
pen and watercolour on paper

Bird skull no. 3
28 x 19 cm
pen and pencil on paper

Bird skull no. 4
28 x 19 cm
pen and watercolour on paper

Bird skull no. 5
28 x 19 cm
pencil on paper

Design by committee: does it work?

There’s an old joke that a camel is just a horse that’s been designed by committee. The belief is that when committee thinking is applied to design challenges it produces a homogenisation of ideas that ends up with inelegant, inefficient, downright ugly results.

This is because a committee is a group of people each armed with an opinion and not afraid to use it. A committee-based design process allows every person to contribute without the irritating hassle of relevance or expertise to act as a filter. With little or no editorial control, ideas get added, usually one on top of the other, sometimes in direct contradiction to previous ideas, with no ability to make sensible judgments about what should stay, and more importantly, what should go. The result is very often a conglomeration of ideas no one is happy with.

If design by committee produces poor results, then the antidote to design by committee must be design by individual - the lone creative genius. This is the model that sits at the heart of the design industry today and guides much of the formal education of designers.

The shift towards this idea of the lone genius was probably initiated during the Renaissance when paintings were first signed by a single artist, even if the work was produced by a team of craftsmen. It was during this period that the signature of the artist became a symbol of editorial authenticity saying not so much, “I did this” as “I approve this”. In this moment of signing the piece, the master painter becomes the meta-creator of the work; able to apply virtuoso skills (such as painting the faces and hands of the key figures in the painting) and also make a judgment call about the quality of the work carried out by members of the team.

This interest in the single editorial voice picked up steam in the twentieth century. As painting moved from being a craft – sitting happily next to disciplines like textile and furniture design – painting became the expression of the solo artist. No longer were there teams of craftsmen working under the management of the master painter. Instead we have the true lone genius working in abject isolation. Even the subject matter became inward-facing and the physical landscapes of the 19^th century were replaced by the landscapes of the psyche of the 20^th.

Keeping in step with painting and sculpture, design produced its share of superstar solo brand names during the last century. And along the way, design education followed the same path, producing designers who feel that real creativity is best done alone, and all good design is the product of single-minded flashes of brilliance. For many people, design is about designing for, not with. Collaboration is simply a way to dilute ideas and is, in the end, a form of cheating.

So, can design by committee produce good results? The answer is simply, yes. A small group of 10-20 people can become an effective design team, able to solve complex problems and generate solutions that are suitable for a much larger audience. Asking more people does not always produce better results. Large-scale consultations are an excellent instrument for some design questions, but not all. Small groups, if properly managed and motivated, can do amazing things.

But to be successful, a small group can’t behave like a traditional committee. The group needs to think – and behave – differently. The group needs to act less like a committee, and more like a small community. And to get design by community to work, you need to know something about how successful communities and small groups operate in order to create the right conditions for success.

Based on the experience of leading various design and transformation projects involving mixed disciplinary teams, there are five things I think you need to do to create the right conditions for design by community to work:

1. Find the right question

Not all questions are good design questions for a small group. For example, don’t ask a small group to co-design a piece of technology. The results will very often be substandard. This is because the opinions of the different members of the group have no way to be reconciled through the design without compromise (the camel approach) or top-down leadership (the master artist approach). Look for questions that encourage empathy and designing for “people like me”.

2. Recruit inexperienced experts

Everyone needs to come with an area of knowledge or expertise that they can bring to the table, and they need to be recognised as an expert in a particular aspect of the design problem. But they need to depend on, and at times defer to, the judgments of other experts in the room. Everyone in the group needs to have an area of expertise, a “voice” they speak from, or a position they represent.

3. Give the group something to work with

Materials matter. And ideas are often like a raw material to a group when trying to solve a design problem. Ideas are seen a something to be built on, torn apart, stitched together, shaped, molded, etc. Small groups work best when they are given tools they can use and ideas they can interrogate and critique. Find ways to make the process of creation easy and intuitive, and go through the trouble of creating straw-man ideas and models that can be used as a focal point for group destruction and collaborative rebuilding.

4. Make everyone 100% accountable for the outcome

Joint accountability is an essential ingredient for a group to be successful in solving complex design problems. But joint accountability does not mean giving everyone in the group a percentage fraction of the accountability. Making ten people each 10% accountable for the outcomes will most likely produce mediocrity. Small groups work as effective design teams when everyone in the team feels they are fully “on the hook” for what the group produces. A sense of clear personal ownership of the outcomes of the group is essential for people to bring themselves fully to the work.

5. Create energy through pressure

Pressure is the creator’s drug of choice. Almost every creative person with a deadline will fritter away the time until the pressure finally creates the energy required to take bold steps. Give a group an unreasonable deadline, an unrealistic challenge, or an enemy to fight and you can create energy and passion for the work that simply can’t be manufactured any other way. Boundaries for the work need to be clear and there needs to be someone who guides the group through the process, but a fire needs to be ignited and nurtured through the pressure that the group is placed under.

Bees

During a visit to the Wellcome Collection (www.wellcomecollection.org) I spent a few hours watching Beau Lotto present his beautiful and mesmerising work on the perception of bees. Watching bees at close range for an afternoon left my head full of bees in various positions and arrangements.

Over the next few days, a few drawings emerged. Here are two:

Three bees

25.5 x 15 cm
pen on paper

Bees

28 x 19 cm
pen on paper

This second one has been printed, and an edition of 50 signed litho prints are available for sale at £20 each. Feel free to contact me if you are interested.

The Big Realisation: Part 2

Sticking our head in the (Middle Eastern) sand

Oil is at the heart of nearly every single product and service in our lives. 90% of all transport, 95% or all goods in shops, and 95% of all food produced requires oil either directly as a raw material or indirectly as fuel to run machinery. Nearly every aspect of our current lives depends on oil. And the relative stability of our current economy depends of oil to be plentiful and therefore, cheap. If the cost of oil goes up, the cost of nearly everything else goes up. Oil is at the very heart of the global economy and if the price of oil shoots up because of limited supply then recession is not far behind. This has certainly been the case in the past when we have seen oil prices spike in the 70’s and 80’s creating economic chaos for millions. The difference this time is that instead of a perceived shortage of oil caused by the political chicanery of OPEC, it is a geological reality.

The effects of this are seismic. If the resource that is at the heart of every aspect of our lives cannot be produced at a rate that can keep pace with increasing global demand, then economic chaos is a logical consequence. And the real irony is that our ability to shift to alternative sources of energy production requires oil to make it happen. A lot of oil is needed to make wind turbines. As the cost of a barrel of oil goes up, our ability to afford the expensive transition to other sources of energy becomes more challenging. Perhaps it is best summed up by an article in The Times that starts with the statement, “Oil ruled the 20^th century; the shortage of oil will rule the 21^st.

But surely this is overstating things. So I did some informal research starting with a hand-selected target group – my friends. I asked what people knew about this subject of Peak Oil and whether they were concerned about it or not. Most people were aware of the story as a fringe issue that sometimes appeared as a small segment on the TV news or in the business section of newspapers or news websites. And nearly all the participants in my sample were quick to state that they were sure that alternative energy sources would be brought into use very quickly to replace our oil-addicted lifestyle replacing it with some other technology or energy source, or something. No one imagined for a second that we would need to change our behaviours beyond what was already imagined to address global warming and climate change. But also, no one had any idea who would be driving this change to a new, oil-free way of life, nor was there any idea what the magic solution might be. Everyone was pretty sure it was going to be OK because, at the very least, the US government wouldn’t allow the situation to descend into economic chaos.

Although I like my friends a lot, this didn’t make me feel very reassured.

I carried on with other research into the issue to see what was being said about it. There are obviously strong opinions coming at this from a multitude of perspectives, but there are two basic camps: the people who think we have more than 20 years left before we hit peak oil production, and those who feel that peak oil is imminent or has already happened. The interesting thing is that there is no real dispute about if the oil is running out, the debate is how soon.

Part 3: A few facts and a few questions

Six variations on a chrysalis

My interest in small drawings of small things continues. This time the subject is an empty chrysalis found by my kids in our back garden.

Chrysalis no. 1
28 x 19 cm
pen on paper

Chrysalis no. 2
28 x 19 cm
pen on paper

Chrysalis no. 3

28 x 19 cm
pen on paper

Chrysalis no. 4
28 x 19 cm
graphite on paper

Chrysalis no. 5
28 x 19 cm
graphite on paper

Chrysalis no. 6
28 x 19 cm
graphite on paper

Moth

One evening, a moth came to visit me in my studio.
I trapped him under a cup to keep him from fluttering around my light. But then I forgot about him and when I came back the next day and checked, he had died.

He became my subject for a few drawings.

Moth
22 x 16 cm
pen on paper

Moth series (no. 1)
19 x 28 cm
pen on paper

Moth series (no. 2)
19 x 28 cm
pen and watercolour on paper

The two lovers (no. 1)
15 x 25.5 cm
pen on paper

The two lovers (no. 2)
19 x 18 cm
pen on paper

The two lovers (no. 3)
19 x 28 cm
pen on paper