Description: Eye Drawing my hand, 2020

Il disegno e l’inconscio tecnologico.

’Eye drawing my hand’ forms part of my current interest in adapting an eye tracker as a drawing medium. My interest in doing so started from the attempt to ”hack” the traditional hand-eye coordination when drawing from life. The eye tracker is a device which is normally utilised within the field of cognitive science to measure our natural eye movements, and due to its capacity in making visible what was previously imperceptible, its application to drawing allows me to by-pass the making-by-hand approach when drawing from life. While wearing the eye tracker, I attempt to delineate along the contours of the 3-dimensional entities within my field of view — in this case, my hand. I therefore do not gaze freely at my hand, but attempt to constrain my eye movements (and body movements) into following the contouring path within my field of view, and I am interested in the tension between the conscious attempt to control our body vs. the unconscious nature of our eye movements (looking). The relation between looking and drawing takes place conceptually, as I cannot refer to the build-up of my eye drawing. The video presented by the following link: https://youtu.be/0Q1O-Kv-wog is the documentation footage of myself while ”making” ’Eye drawing my hand, 2020’. The eye tracker records the data of my pupil movements in relation to my field of view, which data is later exported as x, y, z coordinates. These points are then plotted within a virtual 3-dimensional environment and later developed into an eye-drawing. The following link is a rotating video loop of how ’Eye drawing my hand’ sits within the virtual 3-dimensional space: https://youtu.be/oh1wAbYvEOU

Biography: Matthew Attard (1987)

Born in Malta and currently living in Edinburgh. He was accepted to pursue his eye drawing research as a practice-based PhD at the Edinburgh College of Art, supported by the Malta Arts Scholarship scheme.
In 2018 he was awarded his Masters by research degree from the Digital Arts department at the University of Malta, where he started exploring the possibilities of using an eye tracker as a drawing medium.

In 2009 he moved to Venice where he worked and collaborated with the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the USA Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and Galleria Michela Rizzo. In 2011 he was awarded a one year-long artist residency at Forte Marghera, where he started dealing with his current artistic research into drawing and perception.

Since 2012 he had the opportunity to exhibit in Venice, Rome, Valletta, Genoa, London, Beijing and Los Angeles among other cities. In 2014, Galleria Michela Rizzo invited him for the bi-personal show ’In Between/Viewpoints’ with artist Rashad Alakbarov. During the same year he also exhibited, ’You are a Poser!’ in Brussels, and, ’We are All Posers’ in Bergamo during the Gamec Art Week. In 2017 he was selected for the 3rd edition of the ’Le Latitudini dell’Arte’ Biennale, which took place at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, curated by Virginia Mastroverde. In 2018 he won the Under 30 Euromobil prize at ArteFiera, Bologna.

In 2019 he was selected for a third time to exhibit during ’Ten Artists to Watch’ at LACDA, Los Angeles Centre for Digital Arts. During the same year, he was also present during the collective show ’Soglie e Limiti’, curated by Elena Forin at Galleria Michela Rizzo, Venice. In 2019 his works were exhibited at the Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair with Blitz, Valletta. He was selected by Ilaria Bonacossa to participate in ’Artissima Telephone’ at the OGR spaces in Turin, taking place during the Artissima Art Fair.

In relevance to his eye drawing research, he was present during the recent collective show, ’Dinamogrammi - Corpo_Mente_Immaginario_Ideologia_Desiderio’, at Galleria Michela Rizzo (07.12.2019 – 01.02.2020). His works, which delineated the eye drawing of iconographic imagery where exhibited alongside works by León Ferrari and Nanni Balestrini, curated by Viana Conti. He is also part of the https://reindex.galleriamichelarizzo.net/ online project.

For a list of selected exhibitions please visit: https://matthewattard.com/about/