Pattern as embodied perception of time

This practice-based research is an inquiry into an embodied understanding ofcontemporary drawing practices. The temporal aspect in the act of drawing andhow it relates to viewing time is crucial to this multisensory and experientialunderstanding. My research explores indexical mark-making and repeat patternsas anti-narrative, non-representational tools to establish an empirical relationbetween art and viewer. Furthermore, this research inquires into subjective waysof looking, or haptic seeing of the drawing document and how the viewer's eyeunfolds it in time.This research draws heavily from Medieval Islamic aesthetics and theoriesof perception as they offer an alternative standard by which to interpret andexperience contemporary visual arts. Moreover, my studio practice extends theparameters of this traditional visual language by contemporizing it with the aidof computer-based algorithms and generative softwares, as well as a personalartistic style.The studio component engages an abstract ornamental language to createdecorative surfaces that allude to a sense of continuous space. Geometric motifs/units are used that repeat to create tactile overall planes or Patternscapes.These, I propose, are haptic surfaces that mediate between material time as experienced, and abstract time as evoked through their contemplation. They demonstrate the symbolic and generative capacity of ornamental motif as a metaphor for the Infinitesimal and the Infinite as explored through techniques of repetition, tessellation and seriality. The resulting Patternscapes are repositories oftime, thus allowing for the works to invite an embodied, subjective and performative viewership. They establish geometric abstraction as an inquiry not inrepresentation but in performing the engagement with the artwork.Formally, my work explores the looser use of the `unit and whole' inherent in the lattice/pattern and how it interacts with the materiality of the two-dimensional ornamental surface. In doing so, this thesis introduces the perforation point as a minimal graphic element and a basic index of time that holdsgenerative potential. These notions are critically engaged with in the productionof hand-perforated drawings on paper (some backlit), small scale gilded drawingsand relief works in mediums such as wood and ceramics