Taking a Line for a Walk, from the Abbasid Caliphate to Vector Graphics

Abstract

One of the common qualities of both classical Islamic art and contemporary computer‐based art is that the work of art plays out in time, in the performance of algorithms and/or the attentive recognition of observers. This article will illustrate this performativity in terms of the relationship between point and line. From Islamic calligraphy to vector graphics – with a long pause in the linear abstraction of modern artists such as Paul Klee – the line is not a contour but a trajectory, a living, directional, potentially infinite movement. In both Islamic calligraphy and computer media, the freely moving line stumbled on a point: the proportioned Arabic writing of Abbasid vizier Ibn Muqla (885–939 CE), and the pixel‐based graphical user interface. When lines give way to points, does the nature of the infinite change?