Workshops: Listening - Drawing
Photo Credit Jules Lister
Listening Drawing was a workshop for the general public commissioned by Leeds Central Library as part of Make Music Day on the 21st of June 2023. The workshop was inspired by the work of Russian avant-garde painter Wassily Kandinsky, especially his understanding of sound and the role that sound and music played in his paintings. The workshop explored two main relationships between sound and movement.
- Drawing on the direct correspondences that Kandinsky made between colours and acoustic instruments, participants were invited to explore one primary colour in turn whilst having a sensor attached to the wrist of their drawing hand. The movement of the hand triggered a sound of the acoustic instrument Kandinsky had assigned to the specific colour. Colour qualities (depth, light, texture) were developed in relation to the sound that was created out of the drawing movements.
- The second activity reversed this process. The participants chose a texture based sound and then created the colour that the sound suggested to them. The colours and sounds were then used towards the creation of a group composition. As shown in the image that introduces this section, a large piece of paper was used as a canvas on which the participants made marks using the colour they had created and a movement which would allow them to draw and sound at the same time.