Michael Kelly. Initial Document. GSA 2nd Yr P/T PhD Design. Supervisor: Dr Frances Robertson. 01/10/19 Firstly, attempting to focus on critical evaluation of my peers, I address a corresponding gap in my field, the Material Culture of Drawing, by asking: How can digitally mediated comic drawing index Time and Agency? Drawing-as-thinking refers in this instance to a common concern discernible in comic art like Al Feldstein and Jack Kamen’s “The Man Who Was Killed in Time” (1951); Art Spiegelman’s “The Malpractice Suite” (1976); Robert Crumb’s “Mr. Natural’s 719th Meditation” (1970); Chris Ware's “Big Tex” (1996) and “Quimby the Mouse” (2003); Chad McCail’s “Everything is Alive” (2002); Richard McGuire's “The Thinkers” (1990) and "Here" (2014); Jason Shiga’s “Meanwhile” (2010), and Nick Sousanis’ “Against the Flow” and “Unflattening” (2015). All can be comprehended as attempts to engage readers to abduct (intuit along lines of least resistance) as paradoxical the index (correlation, and thus implication of causal connection) mediating their sense of Time and sense of personal Agency. Although for obvious reasons in the pre-2000 examples above, there is a discernible bias across all, toward reproducing the norms of analogue mediated drawing - even when, as with McCail, McGuire, and Sousanis, being selectively aided by a digital drawing medium. This may be unsurprising, given contemporary McLuhan-esque concerns regarding the place and identity of digital comics (Wilde 2015, Martin 2017). This has consequences, however, for what can possibly become reflexively available to drawing-as-thinking, with regard to the medium’s impact on lived, first-person perception of Time (cf. Shores 2016). Both McGuire and Ware are justifiably considered innovators of comic drawing-as-thinking, but on the above grounds they may be criticised as failingto more consciously employ the "computational" (Hansen 2006) abilities of a digital drawing medium. McGuire appears to have employed such more for convenience sake, to aid his use of repetition when reversing and fragmenting the usual Time as Space of the comic page, and by these means build a codex for thinking in the porous, hyper-objective Time characteristic of living in the Anthropocene (Balestrino 2018, Rodriguez 2018). It bares questioning, however, how far this project could have gone if an ability to infinitely reproduce in fine grained detail were explored, as a means to generate fractals. On similar lines, Ware, an innovator of iconic repetition to indexically generate internally consistent languages, can be criticised as neglecting Difference as a function in this, understood in its mutually emergent, rhizomatic Deleuzian sense. This would seem at least partially due to his drawing in analogue, being not as reflexive in rendering repeated form. By doing so, he thereby limits what could have been an isomorphically derived versatility of meaning, affording deeper meta-analytical potential. In short, a codex for auto- ethnographic research. With this methodological focus, seeking to engage with the more formally philosophical, predominantly self-recursive Time of Heidegger (1978) and Deleuze - I contend that a digital drawing medium, in my case a 10.5” iPad Pro with Apple Pen, being able to exhaustively record and reproduce every surface interaction in fine-grained detail (see attached videos), is what most optimally equips me to meta-cognitively think-about-drawing-as-thinking. By reviewing the generated footage at odd moments throughout drawing sessions, I become able to reflexively think-about-thinking in the Formal Systems focused manner outlined by Hofstadter (1979 & 2007). Especially in digitally mediated drawing-as-thinking, Time becomes available as flat-ontological cognitive equipment, rather than merely an equipmentally embedded horizon for Being-in-the-World (Harman 2002 & Bogost 2016) - by providing a reflexive tool for drawing-as-thinking Isomorphically, Recursively, Paradoxically (as Antinomy), and Infinitely (cf. MIT Open Courseware 2007). I focus on doing this by asking: What is the formal systemic role of antinomy in comic drawing-as-thinking’s index of Time and Agency? Drawing solely with an analogue medium, apart from intermittent collage, Scott McCloud (1993) fails to properly employ self-recursion when thinking out the structural logic of meta-cognition, thereby limiting his otherwise foundational analysis. Although McCloud can hardly be considered culpable, given the relatively non-reflexive digital drawing media of the 1990's. Progressing McCloud, Sousanis’ (2015) thesis regarding comics’ Unflattening function can be summarised as: Broadly speaking, the right hemisphere of the human brain processes information by building more non-linear, rhizomatic connections - while the left hemisphere builds more linear, hierarchical connections. Correspondingly, the right-brain is responsible for perceiving visual images, while the left comprehends written text. The right- and left-brain together build one’s sense of meaning in both complimentary and antagonistic ways. Comics optimally engage with this neural structure by: opening spatial cognition in to relational awareness, by drawing grid arrangements of visual images - and closing temporal cognition in to narrative, by writing text. However, although relatively isolated systems, right- and left hemispheres do also process each other’s information: the meaning of a visual image is, pseudo-textually, comprehended as a more or less closed or defined - while the meaning of written text, pseudo-pictorially, is perceived as more or less opened to more than one interpretation. When reading comics, therefore, there are moments of parallax, when right- and left-brain meaning building, in a sense, trip one another up, and meaningfulness is resisted. In these moments, there arise opportunities to first notice, then reflect on the very process of meaning building itself; to think-about- thinking, or to enact meta-cognition - and out of this disrupt habitual ways of comprehending meaning, It is comics’ affiliation of visual images with writtentext, therefore, that functions as an ideal medium for triggering meta-cognition, while at the same time describing subjects and situations that may have fallen in to problematic habitual patterns of interpretation. Sousanis (2019) is justifiably recognised as an innovator of comic drawing-as- thinking. However, with his thesis Sousanis barely explores the potential of digital drawing mediums. Instead, like others, he seems to employ such as no more than a tool of convenience. Answering Sousanis, | aim to apply his method of meta-cognitively focused drawing-as-thinking with and, most importantly, as a digital drawing medium; meta-analysing my own practice, auto-ethnographically and in terms of Formal Systems. With the equipment of a digital drawing medium, I aim to auto- ethnographically draw-think what, as alluded to in my original 2017 proposal, Gell (1998, Spriggs 2019) hypothesised as at the heart of how agency is trapped in to an isomorphic relation with material culture: by building lines of least resistance to intuitively follow, by means of an antinomy Index of Time and Agency that, as such, engages one to think-about-thinking in an infinitely recursive manner. My research question, therefore, is: Where is the index of infinitely recursive meta-cognition - between opening spatial cognition in to relational awareness, by drawing grid arrangements of visual images - and closing temporal cognition in to narrative, by writing text? Academic References Balestrino, A (2018) PLACING TIME, TIMING SPACE: Memory as Border and Line of (Hi)Stories in Richard McGuire's Graphic Narrative Here. Review of International American Studies RIAS Vol. 11, Fall-Winter No 2Bogost, I (2016) Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, The Uses of Boredom, & The Secret of Games. New York: Basic Books Gell, A (1998) Art & Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press Hartman, G (2002) Tool Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects. Ilinois: Open Court Heidegger, M (1978) Being and Time. London: Blackwell Hofstadter, D (1979) Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. New York: Basic Books Hofstadter, D (2007) Iam a Strange Loop. New York: Basic Books Martin, C (2017) “With, Against or Beyond Print? Digital Comics in Search of a Specific Status” 7(1): 13 The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship, DOI: https: / / doi.org / 10.16995 /cg.106 MIT OpenCourseWare (2007) Gédel, Escher, Bach: A Mental Space Odyssey. Chapter Two. MIT, Summer. http:/ /ocw.mitedu Rodriguez, D (2018) Narratorhood in the Anthropocene: Strange Stranger as Narrator-Figure in The Road and Here. English Studies, 99:4, 366-382, DOI: https: / /doi.org / 10.1080 /0013838X.2018.1481187 Shores, C (2016) “Ragged Time in Intra-panel Comics Rhythms” 6(1): 9 The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship, DOI: http:/ /dx.doi.org /10.16995/ «3.79 Sousanis, N (2019) Articulating Ideas and Meaning Through the Use of Comics. LEARNing Landscapes, Spring 2019, Vol. 12Spriggs, H (2019) Drawing into being: The trap as a diagram for ecological exchange between art and anthropology. Journal of Material Culture 1-20 Wilde, LRA (2015) Distinguishing Mediality: The Problem of Identifying Forms and Features of Digital Comics. Networking Knowledge 8(4); Digital Comics, July Comic References Crumb, R (w, a) (1970) “Mr. Natural’s 719th Meditation”, in EGGERS, D. (ed) (2004) McSweeney's Quarterly Concern: Issue Number 13, London: Penguin Kamen, J (w) & Feldstein, A (a) (1951) “The Man Who Was Killed in Time!”. Weird Science #5 McCail, C (w, a) (2002) “Everything is Alive”, in Active Genital. Edinburgh: Body Works McCloud, D (1994) Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. Glasgow: Harper Perennial McGuire, R (w, a) (1990) “The Thinkers”, in BRUNETTI, I (ed.) (2006) An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, & True Stories. Yale: Yale University Press McGuire, R (w, a) (2014) Here. London: Hamish Hamilton Shiga, J (w, a) (2010) Meanwhile. New York: Abrams Sousanis, N (w, a) (2015) Against the Flow. Boston Sunday Globe, October 4 Sousanis, N (w, a) (2015) Unflattening. Massachusetts: Harvard UniversityPress Spiegelman, A (w, a) (1976) “The Malpractice Suite”, in EGGERS, D. (ed) (2004) McSweeney's Quarterly Concern: Issue Number 13, London: Penguin Ware, C (w, a) (2003) Acme Novelty Library: Quimby the Mouse. Seattle: Fantagraphics Ware, C (w, a) (1996) “Big Tex”, in PEKAR, H. (ed) (2006) The Best American Comics 2006. Boston: Houghton Mifflin