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lines ii

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In the virtual, networked world, lines flow through a shifted political economy. From the lines which formed gridded or Euclidean space and perspective, they have evolved into lines of flight and vectors, mapping new kinds of geography. We tend to think of lines as objectively fundamental forms that innocuously shape the world around us in the way that a 3D computer program might draw the wire frame of an architectural image. As if that practice is free from prejudice about what the line should and might be. Prior to computers, those lines were hand drawn, the body pressing itself to the task of propelling a pen from inertia across crisp paper or smooth surfaces. lt must have been an exact and exacting practice, both precise and sensual. In art, that precision has been challenged and scrutinized to reveal new and ever-unfolding economies of the line, to impinge on the hegemony of the straight line, to do playful and unexpected things with lines. Introducing Aesthesia and the Economy of the Senses, Helen Grace addresses lines as having a moral force and the economy of the line moves readily into the world of political economy and the territories of rhetoric and argument. Even a sense of the absence of line or a focal point already presupposes an existing framework, a grid (or blank canvas) in which lines, points, figures might be mapped, according to a theory of vision and the representation of things.1 Despite their lack of dimension, lines are complex things, etched and inscribed upon our ways of seeing and sedimented in our thinking about space, time and shape. Within the works which comprise Lines 11 , theories of vision and