MDRW 10 - Drawing and Technology

For MDRW students, the week started as usual with the Intermediate Theory and Methodolgy course, where students broke into their groups and worked on the upcoming symposium. The symposium, titled Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction: A symposium addressing the impact of digital technology on the creation, distribution, and experience of art in 2020, is orchestrated from start to finish by PCA’s masters students in the Intermediate Theory and Methodology course. It will take place at the Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires (CRI) in the ampitheatre, on April 27th, 2020 from 9h30 until 13h.

For this weeks collaboration course, MDRW students started a three week workshop with Eric Vernhes, an artist who “creates kinetic, visual and sound installation artworks whose behavior is programmed in some self-generative, interactive or hybrid logic. The digital processes he uses are extracted from their technical background to serve a timeless discourse inspired by literature and philosophy.” On the first day of the workshop, Vernhes asked students to go outside and to film spaces without looking at the phone or camera, as if the camera was a flashlight in a dark room. He encouraged students to use speed to change the flow of the video. Once returned to class, he asked students to draw some of the stills from the videos they took.

The second day of the workshop started like the first, going on a walk and filming what students could not see. Once back in the studio, Vernhes showed many films and works by artists who use video and stop motion animation within their practice. He showed students how to use PhotoShop to change their videos, place them side by side, edit them, and even to create their own animations. Students then drew stills from the videos they took that day. Some took an abstract approach, others superimposed multiple drawings. There will be three more sessions in the two coming weeks of Vernhes’ workshop.