Fluid Speculations
I use drawing in watercolour to speculate, and consider it a useful research method in design. A material that bleeds, watercolour enables me to critically play with concepts. I embrace the irregularity in the way the pigment and water move around the paper, encouraging me to become comfortable with uncertainty. Drawing is thinking in action as ideas mutate, evolve and merge in playful, unpredictable ways, a form of sense making of the material world I explore, populated by bodies, machines, environments, and technologies.
Machines and artefacts, traditionally drawn in clean thin straight lines that reflect scientific rationales, become defamiliarised when hand painted in watercolour, a medium traditionally used for illustration of landscapes and botanicals. I find that drawing machines in watercolour provides me another way of understanding them, through a fluidity that is usually associated with organic bodies, rendering artefacts as uncanny, strange yet familiar.
Through watercolour drawing, I create connections between seeming unrelated artefacts, the fluidity of watercolour blurs the boundaries where one object ends and another starts, creating hybrids. This free association of artefacts invites critical discussions about the implications raised when certain technologies enter domains that are sensitive or emotionally charged.
Watercolour also enables me to speculate about technologies that deal with the body and its fluids. Breastfeeding pumps, urinals, menstrual cups and UTI test kits are artefacts that bridge what is inside and what is outside our bodies. I speculate about these artefacts through watercolour drawing, using both drawing and the materiality of the drawing. I engage with themes about the boundaries of the body, its leakiness and the complex nature of machies that capture, measure, monitor or extract bodily fluids - which are quantifiable - and the associated intimate and subjective experiences that are more difficult to measure with exactitude.
Publications:
-Video of Fluid Speculations for
-So I drew this thing. Conversations through Artefact Drawing. Paulina Yurman. 2020. Position Paper for DIS 2020 virtual workshop http://thingsofdesign.info
-Understanding the Ageing Body through its Fluids. Paulina Yurman. 2020. Position Paper for DIS 2020 virtual workshop https://agesextech.wordpress.com
![]()
Laced surveillance camera
![]()
Victorian mouth operated glass breast pump
![]()
Robot holding intimate garment
![]()
Breastfeeding pump, from looking at a patent drawing of the design
![]()
Speculative, patent style drawing, of a breastfeeding pump with voice assistant.
![]()
UTI test kit
![]()
Human and robot watching telenovelas
![]()
Ornamented urinals
![]()
I use drawing in watercolour to speculate, and consider it a useful research method in design. A material that bleeds, watercolour enables me to critically play with concepts. I embrace the irregularity in the way the pigment and water move around the paper, encouraging me to become comfortable with uncertainty. Drawing is thinking in action as ideas mutate, evolve and merge in playful, unpredictable ways, a form of sense making of the material world I explore, populated by bodies, machines, environments, and technologies.
Machines and artefacts, traditionally drawn in clean thin straight lines that reflect scientific rationales, become defamiliarised when hand painted in watercolour, a medium traditionally used for illustration of landscapes and botanicals. I find that drawing machines in watercolour provides me another way of understanding them, through a fluidity that is usually associated with organic bodies, rendering artefacts as uncanny, strange yet familiar.
Through watercolour drawing, I create connections between seeming unrelated artefacts, the fluidity of watercolour blurs the boundaries where one object ends and another starts, creating hybrids. This free association of artefacts invites critical discussions about the implications raised when certain technologies enter domains that are sensitive or emotionally charged.
Watercolour also enables me to speculate about technologies that deal with the body and its fluids. Breastfeeding pumps, urinals, menstrual cups and UTI test kits are artefacts that bridge what is inside and what is outside our bodies. I speculate about these artefacts through watercolour drawing, using both drawing and the materiality of the drawing. I engage with themes about the boundaries of the body, its leakiness and the complex nature of machies that capture, measure, monitor or extract bodily fluids - which are quantifiable - and the associated intimate and subjective experiences that are more difficult to measure with exactitude.
Publications:
-Fluid Speculations: Drawing Artefacts in Watercolour as Experimentation in Research Through Design. Paulina Yurman. 2021. ACM Creativity & Cognition conference, Venice 2021. Honorable Mention Award at C&C 2021
-Video of Fluid Speculations for
ACM Creativity & Cognition conference, Venice 2021
-So I drew this thing. Conversations through Artefact Drawing. Paulina Yurman. 2020. Position Paper for DIS 2020 virtual workshop http://thingsofdesign.info
-Understanding the Ageing Body through its Fluids. Paulina Yurman. 2020. Position Paper for DIS 2020 virtual workshop https://agesextech.wordpress.com
Laced surveillance camera
Victorian mouth operated glass breast pump
Robot holding intimate garment
Breastfeeding pump, from looking at a patent drawing of the design
Speculative, patent style drawing, of a breastfeeding pump with voice assistant.
UTI test kit
Human and robot watching telenovelas
Ornamented urinals
