In the Beginning was a Drawing ... (Thoughts on Drawing and Binary Code)

David Stern
New York, USA

Drawing, as much as it seems to be an action executed by hand/eye coordination and the hand’s trained ability to make delicate movements with a pen or brush, is, as Michelangelo Buonarroti pointed out some 450 years ago, really an activity which takes place in the brain. Nothing shows this more clearly than if one switches materials, or uses no materials at all, as in the case of electronic drawings, where all the drawing is done through binary coding, arranging pixels on a screen.

In a way this is the only technique to make a truly flat work of art, since these pixels are only arranged side by side and each drawing mark indicates a decision between 0 and 1: there are no gray areas, as in the ordinary human experience, and there are no maybes or ambiguities. It’s yes or no, black or white. Neal Stephenson, in his essay “In the Beginning was the Command Line”, equates the binary code to a God-like quality. The writer of the code needs to know exactly what he wants the computer to do, and only then does the magic work, and we non-hackers see, through our GUI glasses, a spreadsheet or drawing developing.

I am not writing code, I am just using a graphic user interface (GUI) in its most advanced form as an iPhone app, with my right-hand middle finger drawing things, figures, portraits, and scenes, some done directly from observation, others from imagination. It is surprising that this mediated technology allows for a spontaneous and propriety drawing behavior. The drawings I have made with it so far all show the same “hand-writing” as my on paper sketches and drawings; considering that I do not normally draw with a bare finger but rather with graphite sticks and pencils, it gives evidence to Michelangelo’s statement: “A man paints with his brain and not with his hands.”

But drawing is also visualizing concepts and ideas. Even the simple act of drawing an object or figure from life is

such a visualization: by choosing the object, the angle, the trajectory of the line, etc., a concept or idea of the object or figure is formulated. It is important to understand that by drawing a figure we are not making it, or creating an illusion of it, but visualizing an idea of that figure in a different world, so to speak. In the case of electronic drawings one could call it a flatland world. There seems to be an inherent connection between drawing and binary code in the sense that both are used as abstracting measures, creating an interface which allows for the expression of ideas and the transmission of information. Drawing is a lot like binary code in the sense that it also is a “yes and no” decision-making process. Either there is a line or there is none; there are no gray areas, not even in shading a figure drawing; it is always about whether to let the empty space (non-mark or NO or 0) speak or choosing the line (mark or YES or 1). So in that way drawing, and much more so electronic drawing, is a quite pure form of creation, mimicking the ultimate creation of “something out of nothing”.

It is an interesting question where and whether an electronic drawing really exists in its electronic form as binary code. It becomes clear, when it is printed or displayed on a screen, that the information has been somewhere (I guess on a memory chip occupying some virtual or real space?) but is that really a physical or rather a metaphysical existence? Or is it a combination of real and virtual in the way that the drawing is somewhere in its potentiality, but realizes only if given the command to display in some form of material media? In a way that seems to be a satisfying concept, mirroring the human condition it’s in—between the status of potential and realization and eventually transformation, where one could say that all three stages signify some kind of existence on some level.

And then there is the magic of the interfacing apps I am using to draw on my iPhone, which allow me not only to take steps back and forth, but also to record these steps as a screen video, which is like an old painter’s dream coming true: to be able to see whether one actually makes progress by continuing to work on a piece.

Some thirty years ago I had long instructional conversations with E. Bert Hartwig, then already a senior painter, who in turn got his instructions at the Bauhaus from Paul Klee. He reported that some Bauhaus masters made a point of using photography to record the daily changes they made on a painting or drawing; how great it would be to see the actual process of creation unadulterated by one’s own consciousness of having a camera behind, recording every step one makes. In a surprising way, touchscreen technology has made all of this possible. Contrary to the technology phobia of the 1960s and 1970s, which expressed enormous anxiety about the potential death of all creativity and human expression through technology, and mostly information technology, it has rather provided an unprecedented freedom from material boundaries—a freedom we have only begun to comprehend and put into use in the creative and artistic process.