VISUAL SERENDIPITY

A word that I keep coming back to is associative. If our drawings promote and foster associations in our minds, then they have added value. And we have mentioned Google Images as a medium with which to strengthen these associations.

So it was refreshing to read in the 16 March issue of The New Yorker Adam Gopnick’s article titled “In The Memory Ward” about the Warburg Institute in London, founded in 1900. It seems that the Warburg library is a more perfect user experience; most of their holdings are on display for anybody’s use. It was the goal of the founder of the Warburg to increase the communication of our information. To increase the crosstalk of our ideas, if you will. In this manner, serendipitous visual associations are more easily triggered for the user. He then goes on to say that this associational serendipity is indeed of our time.

I have read and re-read Mr. Gopnick’s paragraph starting at the end of page 40. And as usual it is written so perfectly that I must provide most of that paragraph here.

“…imagery is viral, communicable, contagious…”
”Reproductions…don’t serve as stoppers to meaning; they serve as carriers of the force of symbols from imagination to imagination. This process, already accelerated in the Renaissance, goes still faster in our time, and is not just the primary dynamic of our visual experience but also the primary matter of our art.”
“For good or ill, the methodology of visual serendipity is our own.”

So per Mr. Gopnick’s thesis, the primary force of our art is the visual transmission of an idea from imagination to imagination. If our drawings can trigger the imaginations of others, then we are communicating at a much deeper level than when we draw representationally.  And note that Warburg emphasizes visual association and transmission.

And Mr. Gopnick’s insight, that the associative power of Google Images is simply a speeded up version of a Renaissance concept is very powerful. Sometimes when I use Google Images, I have this suspicion that I am somehow cheating. It’s too easy. It shouldn’t be this available. I should have do to more work for this wealth of information. I should at least have to buy the book. So it is reassuring to see Google Images presented in this historical context.

All of which gives credence to one of the central beliefs of Transparent Drawing; use Google Images for all it is worth. Keep making visual associations. And keep drawing in ways that will foster these associations. For as is said above, this really is at the heart of the creative process.