Well, that was extraordinary. I’ve been event artist at The Sensologists: Alchemy, an evening of talks, experiments, play and chat at Flux Innovation Lounge in Greenwich Design District.
Founded by Sarah Hyndman, an international speaker, podcaster, founder of Type Tasting and author of Why Fonts Matter, The Sensologists brings together people interested in all things multi-sensory and crossmodal.
When I cover events, I draw like a journalist, taking things in, picking up topic, gesture and tone – and I bring from my design practice a thing for materials as part of communication.
For this, in the spirit of the event, I brought an array of surfaces I knew would behave differently: non-woven cloth, paper, sandpaper, foil and a fist-full of drawing tools including biro, highlighters, brushpen and tailors’ wax. As the evening unfolded, I was making split second decisions on materials and enjoying the the blue light making highlighter glow.
I was part of the experience – people came up to find out what I was up to. And working at an event full of ideas was a two-way thing, listening through drawing and letting my work loose on tech that picked up images, put them on fashion and animated it, catwalk style.
What did Sarah get? Well, a lot – I’m prolific! As if by magic (appropriately), a box sample had presented itself in my workspace so I'd brought it along and as the event came to a close, I sketched Sarah's sensory type experiment on it and packaged the drawings for her. It’s a tactile record of the evening that will complement the photography by Aleks Jaroszek.
Meanwhile, who knew I could draw on sandpaper? That’s going to find its way into my upcoming artist residency, more of which soon.
If you’d like to discuss having physical or digital sketching for your event, get in touch.
