Thursday, 24 March thinking this morning about doodles about getting scraps of paper envelopes in meetings Biro scribbling mindlessly letting things grow why do we do it what's the compulsion and what relation is there between doodling and the sort of little flash games that I am playing with on the Internet and where you can get little games on the Internet umm to be more compulsive but I don't think you can ever get them as compulsive as doodles because doodles is not just about the doodling well it's not about the doodling really it is more about the situation of being in a meeting or on the phone it's not something you sit down to do you don't sit down to doodle it happens because you're doing something else it is the situation and that is maybe what destroys just about anything err that you're trying to do with the phone or computer because you're not in the situation except perhaps things on the iPhone apps on the iPhone like ipint where you are sharing little bit of silliness with friends in a pub or in a class it strikes me that the iPhone in a classroom situation is very similar in some ways to the notes used to go around in classes that's similar also to the Facebook social networking and into the iPhone apps I've got dozens of them on my phone and I hardly ever look at them they just sit there I have collected them they're fun individually they are great fun possibly but I don't make time to play with them I don't have time to make time to play with them so they just sit there so how do you make a game that is compulsive but not too time consuming something that people want to do I was looking at a website err this morning and Juan Opie and he has been producing art using Flash particularly one where a camera on the Internet is taking stop frame animations and then the animations are added to the website and other digital artist Ross something or other also I think working for Fabrica err the Benetton establishment producing video cameras that point out of shop windows so all this thing isn't stuff is not very original sadly but I suppose you have to do it and then you become original but the ideas are very clever I'd love to make a camera that is showing what's happening in television downstairs in the art room and I could talk a little bit in my essay about the other networks that I have going the CCTV in the art department and something that I could do with that the flashing on the CCTV and I could possibly also talk about the network whereby I can control people's Facebook and start writing comments into their Facebook as I sit in the art department and the control that gives me a one-way sort of game but it's a similar sort of thing I guess quite harmless from me in this situation but potentially very far from being harmless quite an extraordinary level of control and then finally there's the serendipity of finding Juan firstly online when I was looking for flip-flops because of his flipbook application made for Benetton finding the Benetton site and then in the book that I had ordered from the library at Bower Ashton a book about animation there is a case study on him as well so he comes up twice in a very short amount of time and in fact I had already seen his flip book a couple of years ago when it first came out and I knew it was him but all that serendipity it seems to happen regularly you see what you are looking for our experience is far from objective we know the world as we think we know it there was a little programme on radio four last night which I must re listen to it was actually about religion but it was talking about needing to be in a group so you are needing to know what you think you know I'll have to listen to iplayer and see if I can get hold of it

Tags: drawing,web,apps,iphone,facebook,flipbook,doodles

When do people doodle, and why - on the phone, in meetings - when it is not the primary focus of attention, otherwise it would be drawing not doodling, like whistling a tune. It is the situation that makes it a doodle. It is throwaway. Many of the little games that I have been finding on the web are like doodles.

Tags: drawing,brain,doodles