Drawing for Humans and Machines
Do Ho Suh studio view 2022. (©Do Ho Suh; photograph Prudence Cuming). Drawing Room included drawings produced on this machine in UNBUILD: a Site of Possibility, 2023.
AHRC/CHASE Collaborative Doctoral Award PhD studentship in collaboration with Goldsmiths University and Drawing Room public gallery – Drawing for Humans and Machines
Qualification type: PhD
Location: London
Funding for: UK Students / International Students
Funding amount: fees and stipend at AHRC rates (for the current academic year 2024-25, the stipend rate is £21,837 with London weighting. This includes enhanced stipend to cover additional travel costs relating to the project. Please note: this funding amount typically increases with inflation each academic year.
Closes: Monday 17 February 2025, 12 noon
Watch a recording of the webinar for this Collaborative Doctoral Award project, held 11th December 2024, to find out more from the project team:
Drawing for Humans and Machines
The Art and Computing Departments at Goldsmiths and Drawing Room public gallery invite applications for a funded doctoral scholarship to research drawing as a way of exploring new partnerships between humans and machines (computing, AI, robotics) at a time of technological change. The applicant’s practice could be artmaking, curating, or both.
The successful applicant has access to Drawing Room, its curators and public engagement staff. At Goldsmiths, they have access to production facilities, studio space and artistic and academic expertise in the Art Dept.; and in Computing to the Robot Draw lab, the Sonics Immersive Media lab and digital fabrication technologies, AI coding and training.
The supervisory team comprises colleagues from Art and Computing at Goldsmiths, and a senior curator at Drawing Room. Applicants should have postgraduate qualifications in related fields or commensurate professional experience (prior expertise in coding is not necessary).
The studentship
The studentship may be pursued full time or (for home students) part time and follow the pathways of ‘practice-led with critical account’ or ‘practice and dissertation’. The practice may be research through artmaking, or curating, or a combination of both.
Project aims and objectives
'Drawing for Humans and Machines' is a research cluster shared by the Art and Computing depts at Goldsmiths which explores partnerships of human artists with AI and robots, to develop new forms of creative production and new models of how humans might relate to technology at a time when this relationship is undergoing rapid change and indeed is in crisis. (By 'machines' we mean computing involving Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual and Augmented Reality as well as robots.) The objective is to explore non-hierarchical, collaborative relations between humans and machines, with the aim of developing frameworks to understand and critique current human-machine relations and develop new ones. The approach will be through human/machine partnerships to create drawing understood in an expanded sense, by art-practice and/or curating. Drawing has been chosen as the means because it is a fundamental human activity since prehistoric times and across cultures. We understand drawing in an extended field to include a range of forms of inscription, and to be related to activities and practices such as choreography, musical notation, printmaking, photography, and writing by hand and machine (The research will focus on drawing as an art practice rather than applied drawing).
Primary objectives:
Investigate how human artists and machines can collaborate to create drawings, understood in an expanded sense to include various forms of visual inscription and notation
Develop and critically analyse new models of human-machine interaction in creative processes through drawing
Explore the potential of these collaborations to generate new artistic forms and practices and new kinds of relation between human and machines.
Examine the implications of human-machine partnerships for public engagement with art
Key research questions of this project include:
How might artists work with machines - such as computers and robots - that draw?
How would partnerships between artists and machines making drawings together enable the exploration of new kinds of relation between humans and autonomous machines such as when working with AI or with the combination of robots and AI?
How is the ‘intelligence’ involved in drawing, which may be intuitive, exploratory, and unpredictable, related to machine intelligence based on algorithms, data and probability?
Would partnerships of artists and machines in drawing lead to different ways of understanding the relation of the body to technology and new forms of relationship?
How would the creating of drawings from human and machine partnerships open new ways for the public to relate to artworks, and possibilities for curation, modes of access, engagement, and knowledge transfer?
The project also considers critical and ethical implications of aspects of AI and other technological applications: occluded materiality and division of labour, disembodied thinking, colonial extractivism, and racial and sexual bias.
Supervisor details
Research in the history, philosophy and current practices of drawing will be supported by the primary supervisor, Prof. Michael Newman, an art historian, critic, and philosopher who has written and curated extensively on drawing. His philosophy PhD at KU Leuven was on memory and the trace, and he has published pathbreaking essays on various aspects drawing and the trace in art. He was co-curator with Kate Macfarlane of the exhibition ‘FIGURE/S: Drawing after Bellmer’ at Drawing Room in 2021
Research in computing and human-machine collaboration will be supported by Prof. Frederic Fol Leymarie who is active at the junctions between the arts, humanities, sciences and computing. His PhD at Brown University introduced a novel way of thinking of the representation and modeling of 3D forms. Following his PhD he has collaborated across disciplines including psychology, robotics, the visual arts, computer games, molecular biology, archaeology. He has co-created and co-curated the Creative Machine series since 2014 (https://www.creativemachine.io ).
Research in exhibition making and public engagement with drawing will be supported by Kate Macfarlane, a curator based in London and co-founder and co-director of Drawing Room. She began her career in the public visual arts sector at Riverside Studios in 1984 and co-initiated Drawing Room in 2000. Since that time, she has co-devised the organisation’s vision and programme and curated or co-curated over 50 exhibitions for Drawing Room and partner and external organisations. She has edited more than 20 exhibition catalogues and contributed essays around drawing to titles published by Ridinghouse, Wiley Blackwell, Centre Pompidou, Arnolfini Gallery, etc. Kate studied art history and education at Cambridge University (1979-83).
Available training opportunities
In the Art Department, the successful applicant will have access to dedicated studio space and the department’s Art Practice Areas which support all forms of making. They will participate in core programme activities and will be given opportunity to present their research process and production in discursive seminars and in dialogue with project-space installations, both to the Art Research programme cohort and to expanded publics across the Goldsmiths’ Community and beyond. They will attend the weekly Postgraduate Lecture which includes international speakers. Training opportunities are also available through the Goldsmiths Graduate School and through CHASE.
In the Computing Department, the student will have access to relevant research units and facilities. This will include the recent Robot Draw Lab where researchers and artists collaborate having access to sophisticated robotic arms, plotters, in-house built software as well state-of-the-art generative AI systems. Also available will be the EPSRC-funded £200k Sonics Immersive Media Lab (SIML), the HEFCE funded £500k Hatch Labs digital fabrication facility, the EM Lab (Electromagnetic Interactions), as well as VR and AR labs. Training will be available in coding if desired.
Drawing Room’s Research and Access Librarian will provide an introduction to its research collection, guide and develop the student’s research capacity. Its Learning Curator can provide support and training in the coordination of workshops including keeping to budgets, ordering materials/supplies, technical, event management, connecting with organisations and charities Drawing Room work with to ensure candidate activities research reaches new audiences. On the art practice side, Drawing Room can provide critical feedback on artwork; support writing/editing content for a range of marketing platforms including websites, press releases, etc. On the curating side training around curating and exhibition logistics including handling works on paper; condition checking; exhibition installation; liaising with artists; loan agreements; artist contracts, etc.
The candidate:
The successful candidate will pursue research on drawing for humans and machines in the Art and Computing Departments at Goldsmiths, and alongside and with the advice of staff at Drawing Room.
Essential skills/attributes:
Postgraduate qualifications in one or more related fields (e.g. art, computing, curatorial studies) or commensurate professional experience
Strong interest in exploring partnerships between humans and machines through drawing
Background in artmaking, curating, or both
Ability to engage with interdisciplinary research across art, technology, and curatorial practice
Capacity to develop innovative approaches to human-machine relationships through artistic practice and/or curatorial work
Desirable skills/attributes:
Experience with or interest in AI, robotics, or other advanced technologies of drawing (e.g. digital, CGI, 3D, virtual and augmented drawing)
Familiarity with expanded notions of drawing which may include performance, choreographics and movement notation, photography and film as trace, script, calligraphy
Interest in exploring the social, cultural, and ethical implications of human-machine partnerships
Awareness of contemporary art practices and curatorial approaches
Experience in taking part in exhibitions, talks, and workshops
Interest in public engagement and knowledge transfer outside academia
Prior knowledge of coding is not required.
The CDA partners are committed to providing equal opportunities and particularly encourage applications from BAME, LGBTQIA+ and Diaspora backgrounds and experiences.
How to apply
Applications for this studentship must be made via the Goldsmiths University Art Department application form https://www.gold.ac.uk/pg/mphil-phd-art/
Terms and conditions
The studentship is subject to UKRI eligibility criteria, and will cover home or EU fees and stipend at UKRI rates for a maximum of four years full-time, or eight years part-time study, subject to institutional regulations.
Informal Enquiries
Informal enquiries about this collaborative project can be sent to Prof. Michael Newman m.newman@gold.ac.uk