Jochem Hendricks

Jochem Hendricks creates "eye drawings," or in his native German, "Augenzeichnungen." It is funny that though called "drawings" the artist's hand never picks up a pencil or even moves. Rather, the drawing is done with the eyes along with the assistance of technology. "Human eye movements are traced and digitized during the visual process of looking at something" and then are printed later. The final products are never simply a tracing of a 2D or 3D object, and the subjects are never trivial. Hendricks has done eye drawings of hands, time, reading, writing, drawing, and light. The subjects he choses "circle around issues of research and the visualization of abstract motives and processes." 

Time

This is one of Hendricks' eye drawings titled time. One meaning of the work that I initially can think of is that time is stressful and a great concern. The jagged and spastic patterns that the lines are going in indicate to me this level of stress. Also, the darkness created by the overlapping of the lines indicates that certain patterns we traced over and over during the drawing which means that the eye was moving very quickly in a concerning way. It is also interesting that the drawing is in a circular shape. I do not know if this was a drawing done by looking at a circular wall clock. If that was the case then that could explain the circular shape. If this is not the case then it is interesting to think of time in the shape of a circle. We tend to envision time as a straight line that ultimately leads to an end. It is interesting to think of time as a circle because many times in life you repeat stages that you have already been through years before.  

I think what could be improved within the work would be to possibly have some sort of comparison where there are multiple eye drawings done by various people from various economic, racial, or cultural backgrounds so that we can see if people from different backgrounds view things such as time or art in different ways than we do. I do also take issue in that all of the drawings are done with black ink. Colors can also be associated with different "abstract processes" so I think it could be interesting to somehow incorporate that into the eye drawings.    

All information from: Jochem Hendricks Website