This action has been my attempt to understand and transition from a solution oriented thought process, to a more branched/abstract one.
The process was shaped in the form of an exercise in which I was supposed to take an image and keeping that as the initial inspiration, create rapid 2 minute sketches, each stimulated from the previous.
Initially, the first few sketches were rather a bit direct and more of scribbles than sketches. They were rushed since I was constantly paying attention to the timer and the next idea (while I was making the current) simultaneously.
As I progressed, the shapes started taking a comparatively “not-so-logical” identity. And progressively, a flow of “just making” without the intervention of thought began to take shape.
And a few more.
The key observations in the process of this action were that as the sketches progressed, the shapes became more “organic” in terms of thought. I won’t say they were random as every progression had its core idea extracted from the previous sketch/thought. Simply put, for me, every next sketch was less “obvious” in terms of inspiration from the previous.
In this comparatively smaller progression of 90-100 sketches, it would be hard for me to digest, if I take these “images” to my past self, that these are a product of my own thought process.
I feel that in this action, there was a combination of 3 key factors, working together, that targeted the thought to an abstract direction.
- The physical act of sketching
- Generating the idea of what to sketch
- Time constraint
Time constraint, for me, being the most important element as once the flow was achieved, it didn’t allow me to snap back to the “logical” thought again. Conversely, my sketches organically started taking not more than 2 minutes to create even if I wasn’t paying attention to the clock.
The action doesn’t end here. This has been just the point, I believe in a very nascent stage of this process, where I decided to pause. In this sense, its a piece of work that practically has no end in time for me. The uncertainty of outcome is what will keep the process running as time progresses.
