Less is more. Drawing in the age of Copy&Paste

The practice of CAD and retouching software leads no longer to creation on the white sheet but to choose information and to transform predefined formats in a strainless environment. Like in a supermarket, we must choose among a lot of tools and pre-established operational protocols that crowd the field of view. Drawing working detail is modifying a downloaded block; preparing a perspective is retouching a photo in Photoshop; drawing a survey is decimating the points of a laser-scanner cloud, to remove the excess material that captures the shape (such as Michelangelo said). The most of our work is to build structures of relationships and to run processes: only the printer physically creates the final tangible product. Our body is no more involved in the drawing act: every operation starts with the same pressure on the mouse’s left button, while sitting for hours in front of a vertical screen. The ease of deforming and multiplying leads to losing sight of goals and scale of representation: the consequent graphic product is often standardized and hypertrophic, with an amount of useless information and visual noise. Moreover this practice cancels the semantic role of line in favour of a photo-realism that bypasses the graphic standards and reduces the active contribution of observers, for it loses the role of place of dialogue between imagination and reality. In this context, the practice of hand drawing takes on the role of antidote to this waste of resources, to uncritically acting, to the mechanical copy and paste. The additive operational sequence of hand drawing didactically can mimic the construction phases. The implicit resistance of paper and pencil involves the whole body and perspectival sketches anticipate the exploration of the physical environment not only visually but also tactilely. Economy and semantic regulate the small effort of each line: each single sign is strictly necessary and significant, full of connotative attitude that calls the observer back to an active role in interpreting and imagining. Moreover free hand drawing turns on an eye-hand continuous feedback that exalts the heuristic potential of designing process.