Just finished a 2 hour online session with my research class into the use of diagrams as a feature for research.
It has interesting implications for creative thinking, for the likes of video journalism/ journalism. At least for me and many others who draw out their plan, either as a meme or actual scribbly story boards before setting off on assignments.
It's the journey of unconnected that form new axioms and new ideas. re: brain storming, which this afternoon engaged with Masters Journalism students to visualise programme iddeas..
Any way here's a precis of some of the things said today from 7-9pm. All names are that of research students, whilst Susan and Leslie, Devril etc are the all part of the teaching supervisory team.
As the debate was unfolding on drupal, I teased out comments that needed further enquiry or leaped out at me.
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[ did not take down links from intro - doh]
Alison
My take on this is that of using visual methods to "How do I know what I think until I see what I say" Forster
turlif:
images/diagrams are also sequential
susan kozel:
i like the suggestion that diagrammes are liminal, or interstitial practices
alison:
transliminality - a best word - pulling stuff (a technical term) out of the intelligent unconscious into the conscious intellect
Kat:
the diagrammatic process used by paul klee, it is just a sketch book so familiar to us
Kat:
Look at the Semiotic Sqaure of Greimas (1987)
will:
yes, photos can be seen as functional, but Heidegger said that drawings need to exist to pull objects into relief against the ground of the functional
- debate ff here why people don't draw. fear of being ridiculous or that they think they can't draw.
taey:
drawing requires visual editing process while you are putting ink on the paper, but photography makes you to snap the moment without editing.
anita:
surely it a conversation between transmitter and receiver and the connections
kasia:
sketch is an instant and more true than a snap of photocamera, however camera can be more objective (Gerard Richter has a lot to say about it)
kasia:
Theory comes from visual, not a visual illustrates some theory. Using John Berger’s quote:
kasia:
For the artist drawing is discovery. It is the actual act of drawing that forces the artist to look at the object in front of him,
kasia:
A drawing is an autobiographical record of one’s discovery of an event – seen, remembered or imagined.
will:
I like Wittgenstein, 'A picture held us captive and we could not get outside it for it lay in our language and the language seemed to repeat it to..
kasia:
All the intricate philosophy of marks, signs, and traces plays out in drawing. Drawing is the place where blindness, touch, and resemblance become vis
Ian:
Typography is diagramming with words Klee: it is a visual metaphor - a way of marking his thoughts - perhaps like automatic writing?
bruce:
there are those who are visual thinkers (temple grandin fe) and those who are verbal/textual
susan kozel:
drawing is akin to the curves of our thoughts
bruce:
brain mapping now shows if you have a series of long connections vs short microcolumns you are a 'wired' for visual thinking
[ note I missed some of Bruce's interesting inserts on his geoworld]
bruce:
Temple Granding: "thinking in pictures" published a few years ago
alison:
bruce, thanks
bruce:
http://www.vizthink.com/Ian:
Alison: thanks for Csikszentmihalyi
bruce:
http://www.xplane.com/Kat:
A person who forgoes the use of his symbolic skills is never really free. Csikszentmihalyi
Ian:
I fascinated with the non(traditions) of graphic notation in music. The cage image is a manifesto for the instantaneous and its capture
susan kozel:
for bergson intuition is a philosophical method
susan kozel:
intuition is a method
susan kozel:
it is in the first chapter of Deleuze;s book Bergsonism
Ian:
is diagramming also an info-aesthetic, ie based upon an illustration through an a priori language, of icons, symbols, lines
David ( me)
Drawing/ diagrams have been hugely significant in sciences c.f Einstein and Kekulé - who discovered the ring shape of the benzene molecule - the 'gene' of organic chemistry after a day-dream. Some say it was the start of structured theory.
As a chemist we were always encouraged to draw to visualise chemistry's abstractness, unfortunately to the detriment of writing
Leslie:
the scientists we work with often draw things to explain them to us artists
Ian:
visual programing has a long and interesting history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_programming_language
susan kozel:
merleau-ponty says perception is based on motility, and learning on perception
David
Mind maps, meme's as art. For the Olympic bid there was a giant canvas of ideas in one of the lecture halls at UEL, covered all the walls helped the bid in crystallising ideas.
kasia:
very true Alison. painting, drawing are extremely kinesthetic
robbie - do you man circuit board diagrammes? i was thinking of those
deveril:
http://tblayden.com/
My mind as a meme
http://viewmag.blogspot.com/2009/01/meme-mind-map-for-current-affairs.html
Click to enlarge
