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Digits and Figures: a manual drawing practice and its modes of reproduction

This chapter surveys current research into drawing and its digital dissemination. Recent publications recognise the challenge to long-held definitions and conceptions of drawing presented by digital technologies (for example TRACEY’s ‘Drawing and Technology’ theme), and question whether computer drawing techniques can emulate the critical and imaginative potential of manual practice (Frascari et al, 2007). However, there is little discussion from a practitioner perspective of the implications of scanning hand-made drawings. Digitisation is here assessed in relation to examination and dissemination of practice-based research, using the 3 terms of process, artefact and figure for reference, in detail: (a) durational aspects of drawing’s process, (b) phenomenological experience of surface texture, sheen and thinness of the paper artefact, and (c) meaningful configurations produced and reproducible in drawing, considered in relation to Merleau-Ponty’s account of phenomenology. An original aspect of this research, informed by material feminism (Kirby, 1997; Barad, 2007), is my description of the optical, mechanical and electronic process of desktop scanning, without reliance on metaphors of information flow or the concept of virtuality. Instead, I argue that the reconfiguration of materials at each stage of the process, either spatially or serially, constitutes a series of analogies. Stressed here is the contiguity from one material substrate to the next, connecting the singular drawn artefact to the multiple instantiations of the figure as it coalesces in devices of display. The significance of this argument extends beyond the digitisation of drawing research, toward a rethinking of analogue/digital distinctions in general. Finally, the thesis as a weighty bound object, dependent on libraries for preservation, is contrasted with the digital thesis, at risk of software obsolescence but offering rapid, lateral dissemination – currency over longevity. The SAGE Handbook will be the first reference text on digital theses for arts and humanities academics globally.