Here is my latest ‘doodle’ or Automatic Drawing if you will. I call it ‘Data Protection in the Library’.
So anyway, you know how it goes: there’s a meeting you can’t get out of. You head to the meeting room, making sure that you’re not too early or too late (either of which would attract the attention of the meeting-holder). You creep in and seat yourself strategically (not too near the front in case you catch the speaker’s eye, not too near the back in case you look like a difficult customer). You have your notebook and pen in hand so as to appear eager and alert.
The meeting or presentation begins. You carefully write down the title or topic, whilst a PowerPoint slowly unfolds behind the presenter.
A few minutes pass. You try, you really try to appear interested and focused so you write something down; the title of the presentation perhaps or an important bullet point … and then … you can’t help it, you start to DRAW!
At least that’s how it happens with me. Usually my focus shifts from the meeting after about five or ten minutes. Often I stop paying attention because the topic or agenda is dull, or the speaker even duller.
Or perhaps the reason for my compulsive doodling has nothing to do with the quality or content of the meeting I’m in but lies rather in the fact that I just have an odd, airy-fairy brain or even more likely, a very poor attention-span.
Whatever the reason or reasons for my habitual doodling, I’ve been doing it most of my adult life. In fact I think the habit started even further back than that, possibly as early as the second or third year of Lower School (they gave us ‘jotters’ so that we wouldn’t deface our normal exercise books, basically sanctioning doodling by giving us a whole – albeit small – exercise book devoted solely to private ‘jottings’ – how was I not going to doodle then?!).
So it’s a long-term problem which I’m sure I’m not alone in suffering … and yet, despite the consternation of various teachers and managers, part of my subconscious seems to have been working during these moments of unconscious absenteeism. Somehow information and knowledge seeped into my brain and I passed exams and got jobs. So it can’t be all that bad a habit, plus I have usually been left with a fairly interesting drawing at the end of it. So I suppose it’s one of those ‘win win’ situations ….
I’m sure there’s some research that will prove that some types of brains learn better by doodling – although I haven’t come across it yet. If so I would hazard a guess that such research might link the appeal of the basic image or icon and its visual stimulation of the primitive learning recognition centres of the brain (thus the brain prefers an image to a piece of spoken information) with the ability to associate terms or phrases with an image – or something.
To whit: during a lesson, sermon, meeting or presentation, as we inscribe an image on the paper, a piece of information is given at the same time. The unconscious brain therefore associates or links the image with the information, even if the image has nothing at all to do with the subject being given or discussed. Finally, when the images are scanned again, something of the original information (which is now linked or bound up with the image) should be recalled or at least ‘uploaded’ from subconscious to the conscious brain – I guess.
I guess this because I often find that if for instance I’m doing a drawing and there’s a play or piece of music going on in the background, when I look at the picture at a later date (though not too late; say within a few days of doing the drawing), I can recall the exact process or the various stages of the drawing; and vice versa.
There must be something similar happening with the use of the doodle or automatic drawing.
And just to prove I’m not entirely whistling in the dark (despite having absolutely nothing to base my theory on except my own limited experience), the RSA (the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) seem to have adopted the idea that doodles make good companions to lectures. Just check out one of their animations at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bqMY82xzWo (also you can find more examples or ‘projects’ at the main RSA site: http://www.thersa.org/) where you will see they openly practise (and no doubt make a profit and win awards for) what you and I have been hiding whilst our teacher or boss was looking the other way (although admittedly the RSA doodles tend to ‘tell’ the story of the lecture in pictorial form, a bit like a ‘comic’ – not as in my case sticking a random collection of weird faces and buildings on an empty lined page in order to stave off total boredom / brain-death) .
So, yes, coming back to the title of this drawing …
there I was in a meeting concerning data protection in the library … what happened next, I’m sure you’ll be able to guess.
robotspaceshiptank 