Alpha: A Report to an Academy

This is a report of an art-research project that started over four years ago. It concerns drawings made by a chimpanzee as part of a scientific experiment conducted in the 1940s. On the first page I summarise the background to my project, the discussion of drawing that provides a context, and the areas of enquiry that are exposed. On three further pages of the exposition I discuss the methods by which I conducted the research. ‘Collecting’ describes the acquisition of second-hand books dating from the first half of the twentieth century. In ‘Tracing’ I discuss the retracing of drawings made by the chimpanzee named Alpha. The third of these pages, ‘Experimenting’, shows the development of this research during an artist’s residency at MEANTIME in 2012