The Nature of Graphic Sciences and their (In)Discipline

Mitchell (1994) highlights how the current era is characterized by the ‘pictorial turn’, that is, a growing interest in visual culture. The pictorial turn and the digital turn — fostered by the development of ICTs and by social practices of ubiquitous, real-time interaction and communication — go hand in hand in a process of changing modes of intelligence, correlated with a shift in ways of knowing: we have witnessed a gradual transition from a learning model founded on a culture of books and writing — which favoured alphabetic vision and a type of intelligence characterized by sequence — to one that integrates listening and non-alphabetic vision, typical of a simultaneous mode of intelligence. Consequently, the cognitive paradigm has evolved: we have moved from a system based on linearity to one dominated by the simultaneity of stimuli and their parallel processing. In this context, vision and drawing take on a central role. It emerges how representation can serve as common interpretive keys for different disciplines, each of which operates according to different theories, methodologies, and tools, and in relation to diverse cultural frameworks. In this sense, the sciences concerned with visual representation explore drawing not merely as a technical-productive issue, but as an all-encompassing sphere of vision, thought, and action. It follows a reflection on the nature and role of those disciplines founded on the graphic sciences: they possess profound disciplinary characteristics, yet at the same time, they appear as a meeting ground for scholars from various sectors.