Morfill, S.E., Cavic, A., 2016.

Rules that order the reading of clouds

Since 2014, I have collaborated with Ana Cavic to explore themes of dialogue and translation in drawing and writing exchanges. This research has specifically focused on the intersection between drawing and writing as a rule-based system. This enquiry includes Rules that order the reading of clouds, a digital animation in which lines migrate from drawing to poetry and back again, demonstrating their status as fluid signifiers, establishing meaning only through relation. The starting point is a digitised line drawing of a dynamic skyscape. This image is deconstructed as lines move one at a time to form a fragment of poetry, then reconfigure again as a drawing. A generative call and response between drawing and writing is set in motion as we take turns to configure the same lines in order to conjure new meanings and readings and explore the different aesthetic spaces of drawing and writing.
In 'Drawing Desires' written for the forthcoming Wiley Blackwell publication A Companion to Contemporary Drawing (due 2019) edited by Kelly Chorpening and Rebecca Fortnum, Sunil Manghani argues in favour of the 'drawerly image' as a counterpart to Barthes' 'writerly' text. Within this category he places The naturalness of strange things (Cavic and Morfill, 2015). 'It is through the drawerly approach we gain a meta-exploration' in works wherein 'significance... lies in their form and process, more than their content' (due 2019). The form and process equally relevant to this work is translation. According to Jacques Derrida, the source of a translation 'lives and lives on in mutation' (1985), always at a distance from the origin.
Contingent meanings emerge, determined partly by the constraints of our translation process. Using Adobe Illustrator we have developed a new technique for frame-by-frame animation production defined by certain functions of the software. This method involves risk, but also allows for creative spontaneity in what is usually understood to be a painstakingly slow process.