Art makes a mockery of experts and empowers the marginalized. At least that’s how I feel at the moment!
Having broadcast the news of Tim Jones’ fabulous Exquisite Corpse of Science project, I thought it only fitting that I do what I’ve been telling everyone else to do, and get out my Sharpie. And here’s the result:
My entry for the Exquisite Corpse of Science project - don't laugh!
(For the uninitiated, the idea is to get as many people as possible to draw what they think is important about science and submit these to Tim – who will then stitch them together into one large mosaic).
This has been a lesson in humility for me – I may know a thing or two about science, but I’m hopeless when it comes to expressing this through drawings.
Yet it’s precisely because of my artistic deficiencies that I thought it worthwhile posting my rather crude contribution here – if this is the best I can come up with, think what someone with a good eye and uninhibited imagination could do!
Just to prove the point, this is what my twelve year old son came up with:
My son's entry for the Exquisite Corpse of Science project - vsibly superior!
Tim’s Exquisite Corpse of Science concept is intriguing precisely because it humbles people who think they know stuff while empowering those who know they don’t – and in doing so it reduces many of the barriers to effective science engagement.
It’s also a lot of fun – once you’ve chilled out a bit and realized that there’s no such thing as a bad drawing here!
So now you know how low the bar is, grab your pen and pad and get drawing (details on what to do here). The more people who contribute, the better the end result will be!
End Notes.
Something I did try here was to record an audio commentary while drawing the pictures – I got my son to do the same. This is a lot more work than simply doing the drawing (although Tim is accepting accompanying audio files) – but the end result did help make sense of some otherwise rather obscure doodlings.
These are the results. Alex’s first…
Then mine…
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Informed by your post and encouraged by both your entries, I participated and posted my entry too. I had loads of pleasure drawing it, thanks for sharing this idea
Thanks Evren – hopefully the word will get around and plenty of others will also submit something.
It will be really interesting to see whether people come up with very different ways of expressing themselves in this format.
Interesting project. Congratulations to your son Alex and to you! You did not forget nanotechnology
But I did not understand this before listening to your audio comment.
I love both yours and Alex’s drawings, although I haven’t yet listened to the audio (I have no idea what my cousin has done with his computer but I do know I spent a good two hours trying to access his Yahoo! account as he swore up and down his user name was something it actually wasn’t).
I suppose it would be cheating if I did a collage instead of trying to draw, huh? I’ll ask Tim for a dispensation.