The thing itself is Staedtler’s ‘Digital Pen’ which, essentially, functions in the manner of an ordinary ballpoint pen, allowing the user to make handwritten ink notes or sketches, but is also capable of saving such results in digital form via the device of a receiver & its related software program(s) which enables them to be uploaded to a computer for saving, further processing or even conversion to text in the form of a Word document. Even as one becomes more & more familiar with technology, still some developments can appear somewhat remarkable, & the existence of such an instrument & its functionality seems to fall into this category: the fact that the software can recognize one’s scrawl & endeavour to read it before then converting it to neat, legible, typefaced text is rather impressive.
Such is not necessarily the main purpose to which the pen has been applied thus far, however, & here TooT (re)presents evidence of the first purposeful drawing endeavour for which it has been used.
By way of brief explanation, in the interests of embarking upon a mark-making exercise, whilst considering artists’ drawings & also coincidentally engaged in reading the essays contained with the Jasper Johns ‘Gray’ catalogue, with that book’s tracing paper dust jacket (photographically illustrated here), it was decided to make tracings of a few chosen drawings that offered particular mark-making potential in the copying of or ‘being guided by’, with the aim of an exploration of the digital pen’s capabilities.
In a sense, that ‘guiding’ actually is the case, as, once one begins the tracing process, the combination of the made marks upon the surface, & anyway the not-wholly-transparent nature, of the tracing paper, where some of the subtleties of what lies beneath might become somewhat compromised, interferes with & precludes a properly clear reading of the original image, thus one is drawing an approximation of a representation, all with an instrument of a different nature to that used to make the original drawing, should that prove not to have been a biro.
Accordingly, the first drawing chosen to serve a model for the digital pen experimentation was a Cezanne self-portrait from circa 1880, itself made with graphite on paper, as it appears reproduced in the book ‘Cezanne by Himself’: represented firstly is the original tracing/drawing of (an interesting & attractive double-sided object in itself).
copy of Cezanne 'Self-Portrait', biro on tracing paper, 30x20cm
As anyone who has have drawn with a biro might appreciate, the pen, whilst it offers a certain range of mark-making potential, in terms of weight of application, is by no means capable of the variety & subtleties of a pencil, thus the resulting physical drawing is quite different in nature to the source image for all that it is intended to be a reasonably faithful copy of the essential form & its constituent marks: a comparison with a reproduction of the original Cezanne drawing might illustrate this.
Cezanne 'Self-Portrait' c.1880
pencil/30x25cm
Then, the pen drawing in digital form, as read & stored by the receiver & uploaded to the computer. A certain difference of appearance is discernible, & slight loss of detail & subtlety might be observed as having been lost in translation from the original drawing, distancing us further from the Cezanne self-portrait from which the proceedings were sourced.
Finally, & taking us rather some distance from the original Cezanne drawing upon which this particular endeavour is based, we present the digital drawing as converted, experimentally, to text, its marks translated into letters & other symbolic characters: a curious reading, to be sure, & whatever could it mean, in the manner of ‘how’ it does, considering that the text is presented in a format that bears no formal relation to the composition of the drawn image...? It’s intriguing, for instance, that such a reading begins with the word ‘jammy’ (?!) but then chooses to offer nothing other than a flurry of information of which no linguistic sense can be made, other than, perhaps, something of a penchant for E’s & Yen, which we’re sorted for, obviously, in addition to hashes & asterixes, which symbolic transpositions from the original marks & hatchings might be regarded as being understandable.
jammy
#E### i*a*t
FEEK ***#FEE¥*t*
t*A*g*j tIE¥⇐**EEE*II¥y
t*f*E*e.*E*EIEE÷eftIIiIItt
#E**i¥#gg*'EIyF#tth
y*x *EE#E**iIt#EI¥E¥k¥#¥*gn§t,
tpgfFfyy**¥¥#
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