auis “bird + specio” to inspect

In ancient Rome the will of the gods was determined by looking for signs usually in the flight of birds. There was a ritual for all bird auspices. This divination is what religion meant to the Romans.
In this workshop we will discuss and explore drawing practices concepts and drawing conventions. The aesthetic basis and shared languages of drawing sculpture and architecture in western art will give us a deeper understanding of drawing’s formal and expressive capabilities as a poetic language.
As a group we will experiment by drawing along together; to gain an understanding of how somatic marks lines and form concepts such as the circle ellipse sphere and egg apply themselves to the complexity of the figure as an analogous language.
The drawing of the circle is a subject that weaves itself throughout art. Plato tells us the circle represents the soul. Giotto claims that to draw a circle is a mark of mastery. We will complete our workshop by approaching the essential subject of drawing through the practice of the Enso circle.

This workshop posits improvisation as a subtle art of moving through constraint and freedom, responding to the needs and potential of the moment. In drawing, scores and protocols adapted from the fields of dance and movement awareness propel inquiry along the following lines: What might the initiation of improvisation entail? In what sequences and across what thresholds can we engage internal and external impulses? How do we transition from one kind of improvisational exploration to the next, phase shifting and elaborating an accessible path or field for participants? How might we curate improvisational experience, and how does improvisation jive with other modes of independent and group learning?

Helen and Chris are founding members of the collective ARE, exploring the aesthetics of embodied experience in museums, universities and non-traditional organizations. Chris is Visiting Assistant Professor in Art Education at the University of North Texas, researching the underlying forms of education–sitting in a chair, for example, or refusing to sit still. Helen is a Visiting Lecturer at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where she teaches in Studio Foundation, Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) and Art Education, and runs the Storefront for Somatic Practice in Cambridge, MA.

Authors:  Marta Cabral and Sean Justice (Material Inquiry)

Before Artificial Intelligence (AI) there was current. The flow of electrons in and through matter governs the emergence of life itself. The controlled flow of those electrons changed societies, and the planet.

This workshop challenges us to visualize and spatialize the current. Not so much to understand it or restrain it, but to learn to embrace its affordances to generate and grow new capacities for meaningful engagement. Using bare copper wire, batteries, and LED lights we will explore lines and shapes in interaction with flow, tension, and structure. Can we draw and be drawn to / for / with / by that flow?