STEPHEN CARPENTER: We think about conventional activities
to expand thematic and conceptual exploration.
So the traditional ways or maybe more conventional ways you
might think about art education or learning studio practices--
sculpture, working with clay, working with wood,
working with paint, or drawing practices--
those are fine if we want to develop a set of skills.
But what about thinking about concepts and themes and issues?
Well, we might as well get started and do some of that
now.
So we're going to make a little transition.
I'm going to set up a still life over here.
And we're going to do some drawing.
The range of ways in which people draw
is perfectly acceptable, perfectly acceptable.
So if you're concerned that it's tough for you
to draw a conclusion or draw a straight line,
don't be concerned by that.
It's the process that we're interested in,
not the visual representation.
We have the three chairs in the center.
With your marker, I would like you to draw what you see.
And you can draw it on this paper the way
that it makes sense to you.
If you want to draw it as large as you can, that's great.
If you want to draw it smaller, that's fine.
But here's our still life, these three chairs kind
of sitting in relationship to each other.
We'll take about 8 to 10 minutes to draw this.
Oh, but there's one thing.
This is my-- there's one more thing.
You'll draw for 30 seconds at a time.
And then after your 30 seconds is over,
I have another task for you.
So you're going to draw the chairs for 30 seconds.
And then I'll give you another step to continue your drawing.
Got it?
All right, so when you're ready, set, go.
It's not a race.
Just go, time starts now.
Try to put in as much information as you can.
All right, stop, stop.
Now, what you're going to have to do
is slide back in your chair, slide back a little bit.
And then stand up.
And then move one drawing to the left.
So now you're standing in front of somebody else's drawing,
to the left.
OK, stand in front of the next person-- the next drawing.
All right, now keep drawing.
Continue the drawing that this other person has started.
Go.
All right, stop, move.
Did you learn something about drawing
from other people's drawings?
Like as you went through and you sat down and said,
oh, there were some things happening at this new drawing
that you're sitting at that you hadn't thought
about that maybe you tried to replicate
or you tried to avoid.
LARRY SUSSKIND: My attitude toward what
I was doing changed rather markedly in different parts
of the circle.
I started out with trying to take the assignment literally.
And I assumed that somebody else, that's
their representation of that.
It's my job to add--
to complete their representation.
But about over there, by that time,
since I couldn't figure their representation
relative to what I was looking at, that I finally decided,
well, I could contribute something to this,
but it isn't their representation
that I'm helping to finish.
I'll just focus on adding solid surfaces to ones
that don't have solid surfaces.
Because clearly, there are some solid surfaces.
So as I moved along, I was making sure I added something.
But I wasn't any longer trying to complete
what the message was that the previous person,
that the original person had left.
By the time I got over there, I realized
people were adding things that were extraneous
to the literal assignment.
And I said, oh, I see.
This is just a picture now.
This is no longer a still life that has to be represented.
Now there's people just making it into a picture.
They're putting things that are not there in the picture.
Oh, OK, that's fun.
And so now I realized that the assignment had changed
or my conception of it had radically altered.
And then by the time I get back to my own,
I recognized nothing.
And I said, OK, well I can barely
find what I started with.
There's layers of what other people produced.
But my sense of what I was doing changed
as there were changes imposed by many people
before me getting to the picture.
STEPHEN CARPENTER: Man, that's such a wonderful--
I want to transition to the next drawing task.
But inherent in what everyone was saying
could be applied to other tasks, other subjects.
Imagine if we didn't have a set of chairs there.
Imagine if there was a person there.
Instead of drawing with lines, we
were drawing with the questions we were asking this person who
we had never met before.
Or maybe we had passed this person numerous times
like we pass these chairs all the time.
These chairs are just in the room.
But now we put them in a space of inquiry.
Oh, now I have to look.
I've learned some things about these chairs in this circle
that I didn't realize about the chairs
before, just by the act of mark-making.
So what if we put a person there,
someone we may pass on the street everyday.
And we just, we stopped-- instead of drawing them--
we could draw them-- what if we asked questions of them?
What if each mark that we're making
is some form of a question that we're asking?
How much more would we learn about that person
just by talking to them?
The idea here will be that we'll still use the chairs.
And we're still building on this premise of learning
from each other's drawings.
But now instead of us all drawing and moving
to each other's drawings, one person
will take the drawing implement and you
will be connected, fixed to that drawing implement.
In other words, you're an extension
of that drawing implement.
And your partner has to find a way
to use you, the drawing implement, to draw the chairs.
All you're doing, drawing implement,
is holding the marker.
The person who is your partner is using--
they might have to hold your hand or your elbow
or your shoulder or shoulder and wrist.
That's why I'm saying need to have the permission
of the other person.
And then they're going to draw what they see,
they're going to draw the chairs using you
and the marker as the implement.
And you're the implement.
You're kind of in it to see how this drawing turns out.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
STEPHEN CARPENTER: So some of the words
I'm hearing that, to me, work in tandem with this notion
of themes or concepts--
responsibility, influence, some notion of liberation
in what you said over there, right, cooperation.
So these are themes or concepts that
might be important to many disciplines or many discourses.
But one way we might get to it could be doing an activity
like this, even though this activity could also
be taken very literally in terms of formal approaches
to revise and enhance the way people render,
through drawings, who render realistically
the objects that they're seeing.
But there's also a conceptual piece
here that we don't want to miss.