By Hand

One way that people used to envision the mind was as a set of gears, in which little switches would go off and alert another, which would kick another into gear until a task was fully performed. Almost like a cuckoo clock. But today, the brain has moved into a virtual territory in which cause and effect are not so literal, and the mechanisms of the brain are conceived of in a much more mysterious way- like a computer. “The Mechanization of the Mind: On the Origins of Cognitive Science,” an essay by Jean-Pierre Dupuy traces ways that “the human mind can know itself rationally by virtue of the fact that it can conceive and fabricate a replica of itself” (Dupuy 31). The tendency to model the mind after a computer began in the mid-20^th century. Fordism, mass production, and thus mass consumption have strongly influenced this tendency because of their inherent tenets. Furthermore, the technological innovations of the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries have invaded our minds, and the inhumane efficiency of computers is becoming more desirable in the human mind.

If the initiation date of Fordism is 1914, it only took about 30 years for the tenets of Fordism to seep into the cognitive realm. Fordism can be seen as a sort of root to the stringent requirements of perfection and efficiency in many aspects of life, especially the image of lines. Just as accurate and economical mass production has become a proper way to produce, efficiency and precision are now required of the brain. David Harvey, in “Fordism” speaks of the rise of mass production: “It was hard for either capitalists or workers to refuse rationalizations which improved efficiency at a time of all-out war

effort” (Harvey 127). But can we resist efficiency today? Hardly not.

A catalogue of contemporary drawings that I came across at work, By Hand: Pattern, Precision, and Repetition in Contemporary Drawing, is a poignant dialogue with expectations of perfection and efficiency in the visual arts. The meticulous hand-drawings challenge the modern conception of the perfection of computers and their ability to render drawings and graphics by

refusing to take the “easy,” errorless way out. These artists are working off the idea that intense levels of detail in line drawings now demand perfection by the consumer, or viewer of art. For instance, if one wants to draw 300 “straight” lines, each a quarter of a centimeter away from each other, one is expected to use a computer. The expectation of performing the task on a computer is not only for ease and efficiency, but it is to succumb to the expectation of perfection and precision. The viewer imposes this expectation upon the artist. But where does the average art consumer get such expectations? To echo Adorno and Horkheimer, they come from the world around him or her, and the perfection of line that never falters in media images or mass-produced images.

These drawings are barely fathomable to the average viewer. All my friends whom I showed the catalogue to had shocked responses, usually containing the phrase, “How the hell did they do that?!” The amount of time and concentration required to execute any of these hand-drawings is made all the more remarkable by the perfection attributed to computers and the imperfection attributed to the mind. Nonetheless, expectations for the mind remain high, and almost unfair, because of the contemporary tendency to model the mind after a computer. Interestingly enough, as the artists featured in By Hand challenge the perfection of computers by executing meticulous hand-drawings, they are conforming to the modern model of the mind as computers because they are striving for perfection. The lines in Gerhard Mayer’s Untitled Drawing #125 are so precise, the spaces between each line so calculated, it looks perfect.