Mitch Miller PhD Student, School of Design Glasgow School of Art http://dialectograms.co.uk/the-archive/ (Working Title) The Tale of the Constant Outsider

or, how to draw a dialectogram in Four Acts

Dialectograms (a word made from adding dialect/dialectic to diagram) are large documentary drawings of specific places and spaces in the city environment, produced on A0 board and drawn in pen and ink. They borrow from, but do not conform to illustrative conventions in the sciences, architecture, cartography and sequential art in creating visuals that reference, but stay deliberately outside of these various disciplines (Tufte: 1990), Barber and Harper: 2010). They are also constructed from ethnographic techniques that capture personal narratives that are combined with visual and field research in drawings that offer an explanation of how a space is used, perceived and imagined. They are a method of thinking about a particular place or space, as well as capturing existing thoughts and descriptions of it. The process of making dialectograms therefore requires thinking across disciplines. Taking its cue from Goffman’s dramaturgical theory of the presentation of the self in everyday life, de Certeau’s notion of the tactical consumer, and the work of ‘mythogeographers’ such as Phil Smith (Goffman: 1959, de Certeau: 1988. Smith: 2011) this paper will offer a guided tour of selected dialectograms and argue that they describe, through drawing, the shaping of knowledge through a series of performances or ‘Acts’. The first is that of the researcher-practitioner, who must visit the place, gain the trust of its occupants and come to understand it (Bachelard: 1958, Rabe: 2003). Secondly, there is the performance of the space itself according to the various meanings invested in it. The third Act comprises the performances of the participants

who behave and react in response to the practitioner’s research process and their own feelings about the place in question, while the fourth returns to the practitioner’s own performance as an illustrator and ‘enactive’ thinker, making lines and marks in response to the other three elements (Cain: 2010). References: Bachelard, Gaston (1958) The Poetics of Space, London, Beacon Press. Barber, P., and Harper, T., (2010) Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art, London, British Library Publications. Cain, Patricia, (2010) Drawing: The Enactive Evolution of The Practitioner, London, Intellect. Certeau, Michel de, (1984, 1988) The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press. Goffman, Erving (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, London, Penguin Rabe, Marlize (2003) 'Revisiting 'insiders' and 'outsiders' as social researchers', African Sociological Review 7, (2), 2003, pp 149-161. Smith, Phil, (2011) 'An Argument for Using Fanciful Maps in the Making and Remembering of Site-Based Performances', Conference Paper, available from author. Tufte, Edward R., (1990) Envisioning Information, Connecticut, Graphics Press Submission Type: Theoretical/Contextual Paper. I would propose to present a short paper in conjunction with a display of dialectograms. This display could be actual prints, or a projected image of a ‘zoomable’ version of the drawing. An archive of previous dialectograms, and some of the latest I have produced for my PhD are available at this link - http://dialectograms.co.uk/the-archive/