Abstract

Recto - Verso, Redefining the Sketchbook
10th - 11th February 2011
The Collection, Lincoln.
The Sketchbook – between the virtual and the actual.
Douglas Gittens
University of Lincoln

The sketchbook can be perceived as a field of potentialities, a network that allows for the free flowing of theoretical and imaginative applications that are enfolded within a process of incubation. Fluidity of thought and transience of being are amongst the sketchbooks defining characteristics. In this respect the sketchbook can be considered as operating as an interface, network and machine for the realisation and actualisation of a potentiality. In essence, it performs an occupational function for bringing forth of potentialities from the virtual realm of conception into the ontological realm. The sketchbook provides a threshold through which the virtual world of conceptual thinking can achieve being in the life world of objects and space.
When imbued with this liminal potentiality and used in a similar way to that of the artist, the sketchbook offers the designer an alternative mode of engagement with their practise. The sketchbook offers a field of fluid potentiality for the exploration of the fantastic, the transgressive and the alternative when utilised in this way; it mutates into a liminal zone through which the designer can explore their creative potential, somewhat other to the normative constraints of commercial practice. In this sense, the sketchbook offers an alternative mode of practice for the designer as a consequence of the freedom it provides.

This paper proposes that the sketchbook is an inherently fluid and transient space for the designer. It will argue that the sketchbook, by merit of its nature, is a space between, a liminal threshold through which intent and possibilities flow and intertwine. Moreover, the paper will present the sketchbook as an immanent field of potentiality through which the virtual can become an expression in the actual . The presentation will be illustrated with examples drawn from the author’s own practise and those of others.