Drawing imprecision: The digital drawing as bits and pixels

Austin, M; Matthews, L

Drawing imprecision: The digital drawing as bits and pixels

Austin, M

Matthews, L

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Publication Type:: Conference Proceeding
Citation:: Recalibration on Imprecision and Infidelity - Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture, ACADIA 2018, 2018, pp. 36 - 45
Issue Date:: 2018-01-01

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Austin, M https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8353-6999	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Matthews, L https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2804-940X	en_US
dc.date.issued	2018-01-01	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Recalibration on Imprecision and Infidelity - Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture, ACADIA 2018, 2018, pp. 36 - 45	en_US
dc.identifier.isbn	9780692177297	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/128959
dc.description.abstract	© CURRAN-CONFERENCE. All rights reserved. This paper explores the consequences of digitizing the architectural drawing. It argues that the fundamental unit of drawing has shifted from “the line” to an interactive partnership between bits and pixels. It also reveals how the developmental focus of imaging technology has been to synthesize and imitate the line using bits and pixels, rather than to explore their innate productive value and aesthetic potential. Referring to variations of the architectural drawing from a domestic typology, the paper uses high-precision digital tools tailored to quantitative image analysis and digital tools that sit outside the remit of architectural production, such as word processing, to present a new range of drawing techniques. By applying a series of traditional analytical procedures to the image, it reveals how these maneuvers can interrogate and dislocate any predetermined formal normalization. The paper reveals that the interdisciplinary repurposing of precise digital toolsets therefore has explicit disciplinary consequences. These arise as a direct result of the recalibration of scale, the liberation of the bit’s representational capacity, and the pixel’s properties of color and brightness. It concludes by proposing that deliberate instances of translational imprecision are highly productive, because by liberating the fundamental qualitative properties of the fundamental digital units, these techniques shift the disciplinary agency of the architectural drawing.	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	Recalibration on Imprecision and Infidelity - Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture, ACADIA 2018	en_US
dc.title	Drawing imprecision: The digital drawing as bits and pixels	en_US
dc.type	Conference Proceeding
utslib.for	1201 Architecture	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building/School of Architecture
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Students
utslib.copyright.status	open_access
pubs.publication-status	Published	en_US

Abstract:

© CURRAN-CONFERENCE. All rights reserved. This paper explores the consequences of digitizing the architectural drawing. It argues that the fundamental unit of drawing has shifted from “the line” to an interactive partnership between bits and pixels. It also reveals how the developmental focus of imaging technology has been to synthesize and imitate the line using bits and pixels, rather than to explore their innate productive value and aesthetic potential. Referring to variations of the architectural drawing from a domestic typology, the paper uses high-precision digital tools tailored to quantitative image analysis and digital tools that sit outside the remit of architectural production, such as word processing, to present a new range of drawing techniques. By applying a series of traditional analytical procedures to the image, it reveals how these maneuvers can interrogate and dislocate any predetermined formal normalization. The paper reveals that the interdisciplinary repurposing of precise digital toolsets therefore has explicit disciplinary consequences. These arise as a direct result of the recalibration of scale, the liberation of the bit’s representational capacity, and the pixel’s properties of color and brightness. It concludes by proposing that deliberate instances of translational imprecision are highly productive, because by liberating the fundamental qualitative properties of the fundamental digital units, these techniques shift the disciplinary agency of the architectural drawing.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/128959