We know that we are in difficult territory when most attempts to define drawing
“invite[…] frustration or obsession in attempting to clarify something which is slippery and irresolute in its fluid status as performative act and idea; as sign, and symbol and signifier;
as conceptual diagram as well as medium and process and technique” (Petherbridge, 2008:
27). James Elkins (Berger and Savage, 2005: 106) confirms this complexity when he, in conversation with John Berger, positions drawing as “the site of the most sensitive of negotiations between the hand, the eye, and the mind” where “all the intricate philosophy of marks, signs and traces plays out.” While Downs et al. (2007: x) celebrate drawing as “a model of representation that maps the fragmented simultaneity of thought, accessing memory, visual fragment and intangible imagination”, they too profess that “the nature of drawing appears to inhabit an area that facilitates a level of ambiguity and a dynamic that promotes non-definition and the non-conclusive” (2007: xx).
The seminal texts on drawing (Hill, 1966; Arnheim, 1969; Rawson, 1969) are all concerned with the relationship between perception, conception and representation, suggestive of a close relationship with thinking. Edward Hill (1966: 5) employs a phrase strikingly similar to Clark’s terminology to convey the essential spirit of drawing: “to empty one’s mind of all thought and refill the void with a spirit greater than oneself is to extend the mind into a realm not accessible by conventional processes of reason”. Although his interpretation retains a sense of mystery, he recognises that the complexity of levels at which most draftsmen operate can only be obscured by reducing the artistic intention of drawing to ‘self- expression’ or ‘representation’ or ‘investigation’. Drawing needs to be understood as a
“dynamic affair”, involving different levels of intention: probing one’s own image, testing the interplay of shapes, lines and tones as well as the ritual participation in the act itself (Hill, 1996: 8). Hill (1966: 39) presents the act of drawing as an exercise of eye and mind to facilitate visual ideas – “never born whole from ether", but rather the consummation of complete participation in experience, “total experience, everything – visual and nonvisual, concrete and conjured, empirical and fantastic – that is the configuration of our lives”.
Despite the fact that contemporary writing about drawing is extremely diverse in approach and content, it tends to revert to stereotypical eulogies about drawing’s remarkable powers and enduring means of representation rather than attempting to explain the nature and origin of these powers (e.g. Petherbridge, 1991; Dexter, 2005; Kovats, 2005; Downs et al.,
2007). Many years after Hill asked, “what are the mechanics of drawing?” (1966: 43), Steve Garner (2008: 23) can thus still remark: “Just how drawing supports cognitive processes, particularly creativity and the emergence of ideas, has been much discussed but little evidence has been used to construct a foundation of knowledge on which we might all build”.
2.1 What tools are needed to explain such a complex phenomenon?
The complexity and technical virtuosity exhibited in works of art often bring with them “a certain cognitive indecipherability”; they tantalise, they frustrate the viewer unable to recognise at once, “wholes and parts, continuity and discontinuity, synchrony and succession” (Gell, 1998: 95). But what tools are needed to explain or understand such a complex phenomenon, which if viewed as an artefact, different to other/everyday objects, can present itself as a “miraculous” creation because its “coming into being” is
“inexplicable except as a magical, supernatural occurrence” (Gell, 1998: 68)? Phenomena like these are prone to be explained by the “magic dust” error, a complex of seductive but mistaken views that the neural machinery itself is “blessed with some inherent property that enables [it] to act alone as the circuitry of mind and intelligence” (Clark, 2008: 136).
Extended mind theory aims to shed light on phenomena that are otherwise treated as mysterious and impervious to analysis or explanation, by showing that what matters is the functionally supported causal flow either within or beyond the bounds of skin and skull. It rejects the idea of a single, omnipotent, agent hiding inside the brain, responsible for all the real thinking. Instead it suggests that the ‘coming into being’ of a drawing can be better described as an emergent phenomenon as it displays “interesting, non-centrally-controlled behaviour”, resulting from the manner in which numerous simple components within a system interact with each other (Clark, 1997: 108).
A phenomenon like drawing, which is rooted in factors that spread across the organism and its environment, will require an explanatory framework that is well suited to modelling both organismic and environmental parameters, within a framework which will facilitate an understanding of the complex interactions between the two. Clark (1997: 123) argues that complex emergent phenomena demand new modes of explanation and study to
complement (not compete with) more familiar analytic approaches. They require “a mix of explanatory tools, combining Dynamical Systems constructs with ideas about
representation, computation, and the information-processing role of distinguishable subcomponents” (1997: 123).
The investigation of drawing would in turn help answer the call from proponents of the extended view for a more interdisciplinary approach to the study of cognitive practices.
The Extended Mind thesis embraces a variety of kinds of mental representations. Wilson (2010: 183) proposes that the Extended Mind task is to understand these different practices and what it is that makes them representational, examining what forms such activities take, and “just how they bring about the effects they do”. Cognitive integration arguments emphasise the hybrid nature of extended cognition, and “attempt to understand the nature of the integration between internal and external processes as elements of a hybrid process”
(Menary, 2010b: 229). This shift suggests a methodological reorientation, to a methodology which “is not traditional conceptual analysis, but an interdisciplinary, pluralistic motley”
(Wilson, 2010: 183). To understand drawing as a representational practice will require various means, including historical analyses of its emergence and sociological and psychological analysis of the conditions under which it operates (Wilson, 2010).
From the perspective of the Extended Mind thesis the focus of the following chapter will be how drawing makes possible and encourages forms of thought which are “not accessible by conventional processes of reason” (Hill, 1966:5). What follows then is an attempt to collect a range of reflections on drawing which straddle theory and practice, drawing from – as well as interweaving – disciplines and practices such as fine art, design, philosophy and cognitive science, in the hope that these complementary contributions can somehow interlock and inform one another to build a more cohesive account of drawing. As a distinct form of cognitive extension, drawing will first be viewed as an embodied practice, firmly grounded in perception and action. This will be followed by an attempt to appreciate this practice in combination with an understanding of the context and nature of the
drawing systems themselves – how they are generated and manipulated for some goal in a particular situation as an act that extends, enhances and amplifies cognition.