Technology

The complete collapse of the Wacom graphics tablet. Which I use every day. Aargh. Comically, it didn't just stop working but started issuing random commands to the computer, putting keyframes in wherever it fancied, turning layers on and off in a series of variations of its own devising - sometimes the opposite of what I had keyed in, but sometimes a more interesting set of visuals. Trying to tell me something? At this point of course one reflects on the over-reliance on technology (I couldn't look up the phone number of the computer repair shop, because it refused to input any text to the google search box. Of course I had recycled my Yellow pages (bah! Old technology! Dead trees!) so I had to drive there just to ask if they still did repairs...) but also on the abrupt stupidity of the mouse as a drawing tool.

 I had a friend who taught life drawing and made the students draw with pointed, wooden 18" sticks...but even he and his faithful students would have been frustrated by drawing with a cigarette packet on a piece of string. But, whilst I wait for a replacement tablet to arrive, this is what I attempt to do. Unfortunately, as I am in the middle of a film, the change in style will not be helpful...but perhaps it is a reminder to explore the extent to which we can make experimental gestural marks with the computer. The new tablet promises  more responsiveness, a lighter quicker touch...which frankly sounds more like an advert for a condom, but I'm hoping it will translate to a greater autographic sensibility. Disappointingly, some of the graphics tablets on offer have interchangeable textured mats (to mimic different papers). Sorry, but if you want the effect of drawing on Fink-Nottle's cold pressed watercolour paper with a wax crayon...then why not, you know, draw on Fink-Nottle's cold pressed... I'm still hoping there are interesting marks which are the computer's own and not a pale imitation (or even a really convincing imitation) of some other process. Computers can, and do, do so much... can we not also let them be computers?