The art of lying
Within five days of my daily tasks, it has become clear to me that I could lie. I could lie about the tasks I’m performing, the lines I’m drawing, the work I’m creating. No-one would have to know – would they?
What is clearer is that it’s easier to lie in the real, analogue world than it is in the digital one.
I have to confess to making mistakes already. I am trying to remember to photograph the drawings and sketchbooks I am making each day. This doesn’t always happen. When it doesn’t happen, I have an internal debate about whether I should just make it up – no-one would know, would they?
A few years ago I would have been able to take and develop a photograph and it would be quite difficult for anyone to say exactly when it was taken unless I told them or perhaps included a watch or clock within the frame. Now, even the tiniest digital camera records the time and date the photograph was taken. Maybe I could be clever and alter the settings on my cameras but once that photograph is uploaded on to my PC, the record is there, the date and time logged as clearly as the pixels.
I’m recording images a little more frequently over at immaterialpractice.blogspot.com and sorting the photographs of my various activities as I go along. As I repeatedly work on some of the drawings I have realised that the photographs will become the only record of each stage.
For example I am repeatedly adding gouache lines to a small square of watercolour paper and each day it changes – the previous marks disappear under the new lines, changing the colour, not always for the better – as I work my way across the gouache palette, each day the lines get a little muddier, sometimes a little less defined, sometimes a little more. I’m not a painter. I’m just interested that I spend a little time every day making these changes and recording them. It will be finished, not in terms of an aesthetic decision but because its time is up. I won’t paint it again after 13.5.13 – that will be it, its time will be done.
