Abstract
In this paper I describe my implementation of Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #123 in an object-oriented programming language (‘Processing’). I defined objects, properties, methods and parameters, based upon explicit or implied details in LeWitt’s original work. Where additional assumptions or parameters were needed, I sought evidence from other sources, such as contextual information from the writings of the artist, previous implementations of the same artwork and experimentation with iterations of parameter values. I reflect upon insights generated through considering this process in the context of my experience in a different field, specifically the development of evidence-based guidance in healthcare. This project was carried out as a part of my PhD in Fine Art, which investigates the commonalities and differences between knowledge production through software development for digital art and healthcare modelling, and the implications that this may have for understanding the potential value to other disciplines of encounters with artistic processes or products.
Highlights
My background is in healthcare research, decision science and evidence based practice and, through my PhD in Fine Art, I am exploring how art practice and practice-based research can generate knowledge
Since the Artist Placement Group suggested in the 1960s that artists had a role in ‘societal organisation and decision-making processes’ (Stevini 2016) there has been an increasing trend for artists to be embedded in academic, business or other working environments
Drawing Out Ideas: Computer Models, Artworks and the Generation of Knowledge Jonathan Michaels encounters with art in a multi-disciplinary setting may lead to new, shared insights
Summary
My background is in healthcare research, decision science and evidence based practice and, through my PhD in Fine Art, I am exploring how art practice and practice-based research can generate knowledge. In contrast to Scrivener’s view that ‘the proper goal of visual arts research is visual art’ (Scrivener 2002), I would argue that visual arts provide a legitimate and potentially valuable way of investigating all aspects of the world in which we live and our relationship to it. In this inquiry, I explore the process of taking an apparently simple idea, the short set of textual instructions that define one of Sol Lewitt’s Wall Drawings, and produce a computer software implementation of the artwork. Drawing Out Ideas: Computer Models, Artworks and the Generation of Knowledge Jonathan Michaels encounters with art in a multi-disciplinary setting may lead to new, shared insights
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