I'm in my mid thirties (barely) but I've just recently figured out there is a "mild" autistic element that I've been dealing with all my life. This all came to me mainly from my personal "automatic drawing" work I have been doing since around my very late teens. I believe this self-discovery has much to do with the algorithmic process behind the drawing, but I wasn't sure where it would lead (if anywhere). But it really makes total sense to me now, especially looking at my past (losing all friends, outbursts, etc) and making sense of my dad's peculiar alienating behavior (who is now deceased for around 15 years). I had always disregarded autism, probably due in part to the Rainman movie that portrayed it so extremely. I kept thinking maybe ADD, but was never quite convinced.
I've been wondering if some of the insights and methodology of the algorithmic "auto" drawing techniques could be useful in some way to others going through the strange thought patterns of this spectrum, but I have no idea if this, specifically, has been discussed before. I've only seen loose references to art in general that relate to autism.
Around my mid twenties I had read about the automatism practices in the surrealist camp during the early 1900's, so that motivated more to continue, but I've not read anything about automatic-drawing specifically (or automatic-writing) in any discussion or info about autism, so I'm very curious.
It's also been fascinating to me recently observing some examples of severe autism. For instance, a woman with a severely autistic son was showing in a video how she would do "redirection" with her son, and there's something about that is very interesting to me.
By the way, I suck at online socializing because it seems illusory, but I'll give it a shot since maybe I can contribute something. Who knows?
01 Mar 2018, 2:59 am
