The ship is the heterotopia par excellence. In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates.
—Foucault, 1967¹

The project I WILL FOLLOW THE SHIP was the commissioned solo installation for the Malta Pavilion during the 60th La Biennale di Venezia in 2024.² It explored an intricate relationship between cultural heritage, digital technology, and the timeless act of drawing through a multi-layered mode of presentation. The main objective was to bridge historical and vernacular maritime imagery with contemporary drawing methodologies informed by digital technology.

This paper reflects on the influences and processes that shaped I WILL FOLLOW THE SHIP, and how these evolved into an installation that activated the viewer’s perceptual engagement. Rather than critiquing the artworks and installation, I adopt an illustrative approach as an artist-researcher, unpacking the conceptual and technical layers that led the project’s development and finalisation.

The paper begins with a discussion on historical ship graffiti and follows with an outline of how the project evolved. 

The Ship Graffiti

My exploration began with a reinterpretation of vernacular, historically engraved images—drawings of boats and ships that were traditionally etched onto the outside stone walls of wayside chapels across the Maltese Islands. This tradition, rooted in centuries of maritime culture across the Mediterranean, has been the subject of recent multidisciplinary research spanning archaeology, art history, and visual culture. Malta, in particular, hosts a high concentration of these markings, commonly referred to as ship graffiti. The archaeological use of the term ‘graffiti’ refers to the Italian word graffiare, meaning ‘to scratch’.

Two key hypotheses can help explain their prevalence on the Maltese Islands: 1) The engravings were made on local globigerina limestone, a soft stone well-suited for such carvings, and 2) Malta's geographical position is embedded within the Mediterranean’s deep seafaring history.

As maritime historian Joseph Muscat (2006) observed;

It may be supposed that ship graffiti were so popular in Malta because of its geographical position in the centre of the Mediterranean. Undoubtedly, the maritime traditions of the islanders and the proportion of the population employed in this sector was a contributing factor. Additionally, the soft globigerina stone extensively employed in Malta for the building of temples, churches, prisons, fortifications, public and private buildings is a medium that lends itself to the incision of graffiti, and further explains the high incidence of such graffiti in a relatively small space.³

Ship graffiti carved across centuries and regions were not necessarily created with the same intent, and thus, their meanings are context-dependent. Yet the image of the ship itself can carry metaphorical and iconographic associations that transcend time and cultures. Images of ships can be read as vessels of technological progress, objects of faith, and symbols of hope or desperation. Ship graffiti can therefore offer unique historical and contemporary perspectives, for example when seen alongside the colonial, navigation, and also migration histories of the Mediterranean.⁴

Archaeologists Cortis and Gambin describe how the historical ‘ship graffiti are a testament to singular journeys undertaken by seafarers, fishermen, and ordinary people; they are individual traces of solace, gratitude, or hope.’⁵

My interest in these markings is multifaceted. They offer a glimpse into the beliefs, hopes, fears and survival narratives of their authors, while also representing vernacular gestures of drawings by non-artists. They are humble linear traces that also embody the human desire to leave a trace.

The primary source material for I WILL FOLLOW THE SHIP came from ship graffiti located on chapel walls in Malta, dating from the late sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Due to being carved on religious sites, the graffiti has been attributed the narrative of having served as ex-votos.⁶ One striking example is a chapel close to the rural village of Ħaż-Żebbuġ, situated at the beginning of Wied Qirda valley. Its exterior walls are densely covered with graffiti, revealing layers of ephemeral drawing practices shaped and eroded over time. 

The graffiti range in detail and size. Some are intricate in their detailed renderings, while others represent schematic forms. Some are as small as three centimetres, while others span entire stones. Drawing into stone with a nail required time, effort, and intention. Techniques such as pitting were often employed, and the drawings reflect varying levels of representational skill. Some include symbolic horizon lines or perspective-based depictions, while others remain abstract or iconic.

Curator Elyse Tonna reflects,

To our ancestral seafarers, the act of leaving their mark can be interpreted as a form of surrender, a belief that the spiritual realm could influence the outcomes of their endeavours. Drawing parallels to contemporary society, the act of sharing personal data online and trusting in technological advancements can echo this historical act. Both involve elements of blind faith—a conviction that the entities being trusted—whether spiritual forces or complex digital systems—will safeguard and guide individuals through their respective journeys.⁷

This intersection of historical and contemporary concerns led to a central question in the project: How can I reinterpret these markings by drawing a parallel with digital technology and our contemporary times?

Navigating-with the Digital

The digital re-interpretation of the ship graffiti began as an exploration of perception—a way of drawing mediated through technology. The initial datasets that informed the development of this project consisted in the interpretation of my gaze as data points/coordinates, generated with the application of eye-tracking technology. While in situ, I wore a mobile eye-tracking device and I engaged with the ship graffiti via my gaze.⁸ I deliberately adopted multiple viewpoints, not just frontal, to explore the depth and spatial character of the carvings. This practice developed into an iterative one, and its process unfolded across the following four key themes.

The Practice of Drawing

From the outset, the application of eye-tracking technology regarded the practice of drawing rather than a rigid scientific method of measuring my eye movements. The primary aim was to develop a dataset of digital points/coordinates as an exploratory drawing practice. Drawing has a long history of being associated with ways of looking and seeing, and this has tied the practice to an act of discovery.⁹ As curator Mel Gooding once observed, 'Every drawing is a kind of proposition of what is possible to know’.¹⁰

The open, provisional nature of drawing was fundamental. Artist-scholar Deanna Petherbridge has extensively written about the open-ended nature of drawing, and also notes how it is open to the prospect of ‘strategies of deskilling’—as practices that attempt to break away from literal representations in drawing and self-conscious skill.¹¹ The eye-tracking device introduced a layer of deskilling; not only was the hand absent, but the algorithmic rendering added its own technologically-mediated agency.

This eventually evolved different levels of skilling through the acquired experience and the technology obtained the role of an additional metaphorical eye to the drawing practice, that informed specific processes with which to see the world and evaluate it as a form of critique.

Technology as a Metaphor

Throughout the development of the project, the technology emerged as a metaphorical dialogue that constantly informed the drawing process. A metaphorical adaptation of the eye-tracking device somehow enforced multiple invitations to see and question the historical markings from a contemporary lens. By this I mean that the adaptation of the technology for an artistic endeavour allowed for multiple viewpoints with which to juxtapose the several meanings of the project as a form of critique. By considering the eye-tracker as a metaphorical co-constituent to the drawing practice, culturally loaded inquiries added a deepened critical standpoint to the project. The merging of different processes ignited possibilities for new forms of image-making, while also dissecting a generally-presumed objectivity of technological devices.

The Non-Neutrality of Technology

Art has long engaged with the adaptation of technological devices as new explorations of image-making; processes that can also include a deliberate ‘misuse’ of the technology. Artistic practices can therefore be positioned as ideal process with which to critically assess how technological devices influence our lives, while highlighting their non-neutrality. Such acknowledgement informed the application of digital technology throughout the development of I WILL FOLLOW THE SHIP.

One important source for this was Jonathan Crary’s criticism of the application of eye-tracking data by capitalist ventures. Crary notes how eye-tracking data is being used for profit through the erroneous assumption that our eye movements equate our attention and thinking, and criticised how eye-tracking big data has intrinsically grown to define what is eye-catching for our attention.¹² In other words, we live in times where our eye movements are monetised with drastic effects on our visual perception (and visual culture), that is ceaselessly capitalised upon through the way we are now regarded as 24/7 potential consumers. The development of I WILL FOLLOW THE SHIP was strongly informed by this.

Eye-tracking technology has a long history, as interest in the study of eye movements started towards the end of the 1800s, and the first eye-trackers were built in the early 1900s. By the 1960s there was significant technological advancements, and the first attempts at drawing with the eyes were made by individuals like designer Richard Coss, as he experimented with the technology by drawing a car.¹³ The technology’s accessibility and popularity multiplied drastically with the arrival of the digital age from the late 1990s onwards, and different contemporary artists have made use of it for different reasons, projects and contexts. Eye-tracking is now still used in scientific research, but also in human-computer interaction, gaming, and, as mentioned earlier, capitalist ventures such as marketing.

Contemporary eye-tracking technology carries hybrid aspects, as it merged with other technologies (for example, webcams and headsets). The aim of this project was never to solely interpret the historical graffiti via the application of eye-tracking data. Thus, my process was further developed via a deliberate hybrid juxtaposition with different technologies, which ultimately informed the finalisation of I WILL FOLLOW THE SHIP.

Developing a Hybrid Approach

As I processed the eye-tracking datasets of the historical ship graffiti, I found myself operating in a virtual space where the resulting digital drawings appeared suspended. 3D software allowed me to expand on the three-dimensional aspects afforded by the different viewpoints and readings of the graffiti and I started to superimpose them with other processes including 3D scanning. I understood these experiments as a drawing board, which led to the emergence of a hybrid approach that would also evidence the non-neutral aspects of digital technology, both in the development of the final artworks and of the installation of the project. I WILL FOLLOW THE SHIP resulted in a curatorial setup that included four main artworks.

The introductory work to the pavilion consisted in the free-standing sculptural wall, Wall of Ships, measuring 250 x 545 x 80 cm. This work derived from the idea of a technological reinterpretation of a historical chapel wall with ship graffiti, while also serving a curatorial purpose in the exhibition design, as it was mirrored by an LED technological wall. Metaphorically-speaking, the tangible wall delineated an outside space before entering a technologically-mediated environment. The wall included eye-tracking drawings of different ship graffiti, and the gaze data was drawn onto the stone via different pen-plotting experiments. The drawings also highlighted the varying viewpoints stemming from the reinterpretation of the historical ship graffiti, and the stone that was used was not a natural one, but reconstituted. The aim of this artwork was to introduce a tangible representation that bridged contemporary notions with the historical context, imagery, identities, and narratives that informed the project.

In her text accompanying the exhibition, curator Elyse Tonna highlighted how in the past, ex-votos would generate other ex-votos.¹⁴ This concept informed the development of the generative video work, Follow the Ship(s), which was installed parallel to Wall of Ships on the other side of the hall, and screened on an LED wall measuring 350 x 650 cm. The generative video work was developed out of different datasets, that principally consisted of; 1) my gaze data of the ship graffiti, 2) different footage of the Mediterranean Sea that I had recorded along the coastline of the Maltese Islands, and 3) different sound recordings from natural environments and datasets, such as eye-tracking data, that were converted into audio.¹⁵ The generative moving image emerged out of different juxtapositions of details from these libraries, as different algorithms were used to create imagery that continuously sought morphing combinations from the gaze data drawings as new possible representations and variations of ship drawings. The imagery of the sea acted as the canvas that guided the generative process, as data points emerged and followed the transitory imagery of the sea, while in turn influencing the morphing digital drawings. The Mediterranean Sea remains a geographical area rich with hopes, fears, and a multitude of socio-political layers, and the generation of morphing digital ships was anchored around its imagery. All movements and transitions were intentionally rendered as slow-moving, aiming to capture viewers’ attention and inviting them to slow down, reflect, relate and perceive.

Flanking Wall of Ships and Follow the Ship(s) were two vertical LED walls that revealed aspects of the technological process behind this project. One screen showcased the recording of my eye and the algorithmic processes that datafied my eye movements. The other side screen illustrated the development of the gaze data points into lines, and hence, into the digital ship drawings.

Art critic and curator Domenico Quaranta noted how through this, the technology was:

disassembled before our eyes as we see how it works, stripping it of its magic and presenting it as a, complex, layered, and imperfect combination of apparatuses such as cameras, algorithms, and motion sensors. While the technology is demystified, I WILL FOLLOW THE SHIP subtly and ironically activates—on the level of exhibition design—other strategies of seduction and disappointment, which play with our delusional relationship with technology: we feel like we are in a church, but who is this god we worship? Attard provocatively asks whether our presence is really necessary, and uses the metaphor of where one ends beyond the metaphor of the Pillars of Hercules.¹⁶ 

Draw Your Ship 

I would like to conclude this paper with the mention of the fourth and last artwork of the project, Ship Graffiti QR, which instigated the public’s direct participation. The work consisted in three painted QR codes with ship imagery embedded within them. The intent was to create a painted image as a representative hybrid of technological aesthetics and ship graffiti, but that remained functional and acted as a gateway to a digital platform. Members of the public who took a photo or attempted to scan the QR paintings were directed to an online website that asked them to draw their own ship via their mobile phone.

Throughout the exhibition, this formed a remarkable archive of public drawings of almost 30,000 submissions of expanded interpretations of ships, which also included portraits, drawings of animals, current affairs and socio-political messages among others. This is an archive with potential future exploration on the theme of the act of drawing.

Conclusion

I WILL FOLLOW THE SHIP was conceived not only as an artistic reflection on maritime iconography but also as a critical examination of how we perceive, represent, and engage with vernacular histories and digital technology. By revisiting the humble gestures of ship graffiti, the project focuses on a lineage of mark-making that is deeply human—representative of memory, fear, faith, and survival. Through a hybrid digital methodology, it opens intriguing pathways for artistic research, participatory drawing, and speculative reinterpretations of cultural heritage from a contemporary lens.