Cosmopoiesis: To Code the Drawing

Michael Culhane Content 14B — The avatar can collide and shift pencil lines and watercolour textures as if they were physical objects with their own density and mass

Through the native coding language of GameMaker, I can explore the drawings through a digital avatar that can navigate through and teleport between different drawings. The drawing is transformed into a reactive, psychosomatic landscape that animates and transforms in response to the avatar's movement, and have drawings that overlay and interface in a powerfully intriguing aesthetic.

The historical role of the drawing has always been affected by technological innovation. During the early 1900s with the development of the camera, the role of the drawing was put under scrutiny. Its historical function of representing the world was done much more efficiently by the technological innovation of the camera, and that allowed art movements such as Cubism to develop ways of drawing that spatially represented reality differently. Similarly, the recent development of CAD tools has superseded the functional role of the hand-drawing from the architectural practice. This has freed up the role of drawing in architectural practice as the drawing need not be as concerned with its role as a signifier of a realised architectural project.

From the rise of the computer and increasing computerization of the architectural discipline, digital tools and analogue tools have proven not to be enemies standing at different camps, but instead interesting companions to one another and this proposal proves that one can enhance the other.