The OGT Daily #35 Neurographic Art

I learned something new today. I had heard of Neurographic Art. Had students describe it to me and read papers they have written about it. Seems vaguely related to embodied techniques and claims relationship to neuroscience.  But also smacked of gimmickry to me. I'm always suspicious of cooky cutter art making directives.

I looked it up for a lecture I'm preparing about touch in art therapy and actually it seemed pretty cool.

Started by Pavel Piskarev, a Russian psychologist, in 2014. He described a hierarchy of consciousness and maintained that mindful, meditative doodling could break one out of the "default mode" or habituated ways of seeing and thinking and be open to new thoughts and perceptions. It's become quite popular online and on social media.

Just Google it and you'll see. The person I watched do a demo, Anton Antokhin, described using a mindfulness meditation to get himself into contact with his inner self, quiet all the outside noise, and then allow the energy in his body to guide his pen to make a beginning mark on the page. Then without censoring he continued to make intersecting lines where ever he was drawn to. 

The next step was to go in and round and thicken some of the connections, emphasize certain lines and then add color. As far as I can see this takes you into a flow state (Csikzentmihalyi, 1990) which is a hallmark of positive psychology as well as of divergent thinking or daydreaming which is necessary for creative process. 

It seems like a fun process and I look forward to trying.

I'm grateful this old cat can learn a new trick. What are you grateful for today?

https://neurographic.art/