Abstract:
Panofsky promotes linear perspective as a modern scopic regime because of
its capacity to ‘maintain’ the visual dimensional integrity of the form it represents.
Validation of this method lies implicitly around an argument of
tracing existent form when in actuality perspective is architecturally deployed
for its projective capacity. This schism between trace and projection is
obvious given that the constructional logic of linear perspective is entirely
dependent on the orthographic drawing. Put simply, without the plan, section
and elevation there can be no perspective drawing.
The repercussions are threefold; the ability to exceed a purely illustrative role
occurs only in a semiotic sense where the image operates figuratively.
Secondly the privileging of orthographic projection instigates a formal
dependence on precedent, ensuring that the projective is confined to the
trace. Finally, the complexity of the technique and nature of the media limits
what can be drawn, resulting in a privileging simplified form.
The scopic regime of the digital fundamentally alters the capacity to make
form because of the computational ability to rapidly produce multiple static
and cinematic views without the primacy of orthographic projection. This
erases the formal determinism evident in linear perspective. The paper, in
reference to a range of contemporary digital design practices, aims to discuss
how the computer’s facility to readily render perspectival images contributes
to the digital’s distinctive formal repertoire. This discussion will also address
how the digital, by exceeding the illustrative function of linear perspective,
replaces a privileging of figurative with that of the figural. The paper will
therefore map the constructional and intellectual limitations imposed on form
by drafted linear perspective and argue how both the aesthetics and the
formalism of the digital is profoundly embedded in both the generative and
illustrative capacity of the tools of production.
