Diagrammatic — Drawing as Hypothesis

A single-file SVG editor for making diagrammatic studies over photographs — drawings that read as cartographic, geological or schematic rather than illustrative. Load a photo, generate a vector trace from its edges, then layer regions, washes, twelve textures, stamps and annotations on top. Every mark stays a vector element; nothing rasterises, so nothing is ever fixed. It exports to SVG and to PNG at up to six times size, with an auto-generated legend that travels with the diagram.

I built it alongside my research-creation work on self-portraiture and AI, working with face-images recomposed by generative systems, and it takes its title from Nikolaus Gansterer’s Drawing a Hypothesis — the diagrammatic tradition that treats drawing as a way of thinking rather than of depicting. The study shown here is an engine labelled with the parts of narrative: RHYTHM, PLOT, character, PROSE, and along its underside, something happens followed by something else happens.