Aims an Methods of Note-Taking, Turkan Mehraj Ismailli

lsimonsart
13 hours ago
3 min read

Reading Aims and Methods of Note-Taking, by Turkan Mehraj Ismailli, has prompted me to rethink what note-taking might mean within my artistic practice. Rather than understanding notes simply as preparatory material for an artwork, I am beginning to consider note-taking itself as a form of making—a live, cognitive, and material process that could be the artwork.

The text frames note-taking as an active intellectual and embodied activity rather than a passive recording of information. Ismailli describes note-taking as a process of selection, transformation, and sense-making: the note-taker must decide what is relevant, how ideas relate, and how to translate fleeting information into personal visual or written language. Importantly, the act of writing is not merely archival; it is a form of thinking in real time.

This idea resonates strongly with my studio interests and the development with my work. If note-taking is already a cognitive and creative act—involving attention, interpretation, and personal structure—then perhaps it can function as an artwork, rather than a behind-the-scenes tool for producing one. I am interested in shifting note-taking from a private, utilitarian activity into a visible, aesthetic, and conceptual practice.

The article also emphasises how note-taking relies on working memory, concentration, and individual cognitive style. This aligns with my interest in how thinking, perception, and neurodivergent ways of processing information might manifest materially. Real-time note-taking could become a trace of how I think: fragmented, associative, non-linear, visually coded, or diagrammatic. Instead of striving for "clear" and "correct" notes, I might embrace misreadings, tangents, abbreviations, and visual systems that reflect my own mental processes.

I am particularly drawn to the idea that notes are written primarily "for oneself rather than for an audience." Yet, if I bring this private activity into the gallery or studio context, what happens when personal thinking becomes public? The work could sit somewhere between document, drawing, performance, and cognitive map, revealing not just what I read or hear, but how I process it in the moment.

Practically, this might involve:

taking handwritten notes while listening to lectures or reading texts in the studio
enlarging, translating, or reworking those notes into larger visual compositions
treating pages of real-time notes as finished works rather than preparatory sketches
experimenting with different note-taking formats: diagrams, lists, arrows, symbols, or layered writing

Rather than refining notes into something polished, I want to preserve their immediacy, their hesitations, overlaps, repetitions, and gaps. These qualities could become central to the aesthetic of the work, emphasising process over product.

Ultimately, this text has helped me see note-taking not just as a learning strategy, but as a potential artistic method—one that makes thinking visible, material, and spatial. By working with real-time note-taking as artwork, I hope to blur the separations between research, cognition, and visual practice.

During the time between the end of year exhibition (2025), and now, I decided to lean more into the note taking idea to see how I felt about the process and because of my curiosity of what the outcome would look like.

The works shown below, although have the same ideas as the previous works from the end of 2025, have a very different visual outcome. By leaning more into the act of notetaking, I find that these works are more visually striking with the mix of realistic drawing, text, silhouette, and doodling. The process of creating itself was a lot more enjoyable for me as a process based artist, rather than the works that I have previously produced that often feel strenuous on my focus due to higher details and my personal annoyance of perfectionism.

I do feel that with these works I am on an interesting pathway, visually, that works really well for me and my contextual ideas that I lean into.