ontological bleed illustrations

The illustrations accompanied my research paper, ontological bleed: blurred borders of fictional worlds in interface games.

While working on my paper, I frequently needed to sketch abstracted concepts out in order to understand them. Drawing is an essential method for me to work through understanding of theoretical concepts – to create and narrativize spatial relationships between subjects. By using a multicolour ballpoint pen, I was able to colour code these relationships. The drawings have a mystical, esoteric quality because it's who I am, and because I was researching what felt like mystical, esoteric theory.

The drawings were helpful for me to work through my own understanding, but they also functioned to communicate - both to illustrate concepts in a language that was very specific to me, and to communicate my enthusiasm about them. My thesis research covered specific topics in literary theory as applied to game studies, and my research creation project was a game which played with the uncanny borders between the digital and the tangible, and the fictional and the actual.

Zine

I also published an 11x17 three colour risographed 'foldy' zine with some of the illustrations to hand out during the final thesis exhibition. This zine presented the illustrations entirely without context, a mysterious souvenir for people to keep from their visit to another world

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Future Work

I intend to expand my research into drawing and illustration as a method for synthesizing research. Many of the illustrations I redrew several times throughout the research process as my understanding of the concepts changed - I would include and annotate these evolutions. I hope that this post mortem, and analyzing the drawings I made will give me further insight into why this method worked so well for me, and to provide a starting point for how it may work for others.

I'm also interested in working with other researchers to create conceptual illustrations and diagrams for their research. This could be near the end of the research project, illustrating for communication with their audience, or earlier in the research phase to collaborating by passing information back and forth. I have worked before with researchers in other fields, creating animated infographics for workshops on sleep health.