Jennifer Taylor
This exercise took place over a 78 hours period in the John Labatt Visual Arts Building at Western University. There were a total of 19 participants. In this surreal automatic drawing exercise, I was interested in exploring the element of chance, in addition to having sound and drawing interact with each other.
The audio is inseparable from the building, because the audio, although rendered to be surreal, is from day-to-day sounds in the Art Centre. The goal was to create a surreal audio track that would be played in the location of where the sounds were originally captured, and encourage people within that location to allow the audio to influence their contribution to the automatic drawing.
The concept of chance and coincidence in our everyday lives intrigues me. We are living in a society where planning and the strive for greater efficiency is constantly being encouraged in a more subconscious, opposed to literal, manner. The notion that knowing what is to come will lead to greater progress and efficiency is challenged in this piece by allowing individuals to react to the installation without supervision and accountability for how much, or how little (including non participation) they choose to engage with the installation.
The automatic drawing is pictured to the left.
<click to play/pause audio, best listened to via headphones
Installation Location: John Labatt Visual Arts Building, Western University, London, Ontario
materials: cardstock,
