Overcoming our limitations

It has been said that drawing is a carefully choreographed dance between the brain, eyes, and hands. It requires the cooperation and coordination of the three to translate what’s seen in the mind to what’s drawn on paper. But it doesn’t always quite work out. Things – namely, your hands, can get in the way of artistic vision.

Being a designer at LAW Creative, it is important that the translation between mind and hand is good. But what if we didn’t have to draw with our hands? What if we could over come our hands’ limitations.

In Graham Fink’s recent exhibition ‘Drawing With My Eyes’ the artist drew portraits using only his eyes, some software and enviable amounts of concentration. Fink worked with a programmer to develop software for an eye-tracker that would allow him to draw simply by looking at the screen.

The technology works by shining infra-red light straight into the eyes. The reflections are recorded with a camera and passed through filters that slow the natural oscillation of the eye, turning what otherwise would be a shaky line into something much smoother.

His portraits are drawn with a continuous line, like an Etch-A-Sketch without a shake-to-erase feature. It can take anywhere from five minutes to an hour to complete a portrait, depending on the level of concentration.

The trick, apparently, is to clear the mind as much as possible. Even Fink, with years of experience meditating, quickly realised he can exercise only so much control over his brain. Beyond that, we must trust that our subconscious knows what it’s doing.

The resulting beautifully abstract faces are to some degree the result of an imperfect control over our eye movement. But by eliminating the hands from the process, it’s also a uniquely pure form of expression.

We are interested in employing advancing technologies on behalf of our clients, such as augmented reality and iBeacons. And if our clients could ‘Draw with their eyes’, it could help translate their thoughts and ideas to us at LAW.