‘The Aesthetics of Change’ is an experimental live drawing research project initiated by Rochelle Haley in 2010 and developed during a series of residencies and performances in Malaysia, Portugal, Australia and France. The aim of the project is to develop an original language within perspective drawing that is communicable through performance and drawing.

 

The act of drawing itself is the form of the research. It involves the artist actively perceiving and drawing the movements of one or more performers in real time. Haley draws with two hands simultaneously tracking two fixed points on the performer’s body. The drawn lines are projected onto a large wall/screen through a live feed. Additional performers face the projection and actively perceive the changing drawn lines with their bodies. The dancers follow the moving positions of the two drawn lines with fixed points on their own bodies.

 

Articulating on a two-dimensional surface the changing positions of figures in three-dimensional space in real time through continuous line drawing is a departure for the discipline of perspective drawing. One of the main aims of the research is to highlight the difference between what we know about movement in real time and space and how we perceive this movement; thereby touching on concepts within contemporary philosophy about the conflation of the epistemology and ontology of kinesthetics. Finally, as the live drawing method involves a movement impulse that is passed between several people it may prove relevant to research into motion prediction and response in the science of vision and neurology – notably research into mirror neurons.

 

In this project, movement is transformed into a visual expression made present to the audience in a manner that reveals new presentational knowledge of kinesthetic relations through drawing.