I drew this picture as a gift for a good friend on his wedding day. I am proud of it, but the reason I bring it to this site is to talk about a happy accident in the digital photo.
Since I don't have a scanner, I had to use a web cam to grab this image (It's hard saying goodbye to pages from my sketchbook). What resulted is a picture that reflects both my object and the conditions under which it was photographed - in this case i would like to point out a slight bend in the paper, accentuated by a strong overhead light source. The result is a gradient of light that introduces color (the page is black and white in tangible form) and selectively accentuates texture.
If you look closely, you can see that pencil density is at its greatest where the figures kiss and it trails off at their lower bodies. This was my attempt to have the couple fade out into the larger body of the paper. When i look at this digital image, I see an accidental introduction of elements that trump (or even augment) my original formal conceit.
OK, so it's serendipity - Why should we care??
The digital form is precise; it insulates our information from the world - from risk - so that we can best control what manipulations, if any, will occur. This suggests a stasis, where the nuances of the tangible object and its place in the world are lost. But there is a trade-off...we do gain something: We gain a master copy, a digital form from which many transformations of our object can take place. Our objects (in digital form) are pregnant with potential. Every transformation they enable is another opportunity for serendipity to introduce itself.
The digital photo of my drawing is useful to me because the setting (coffee shop interior) had an effect on the object during the act of picture taking. Happy discovery requires variability. I can imagine a practice of exploiting the digital form to realize and observe work in as many real-world forms and settings as resources allow. We could also model and simulate how permutations of the digital form interact with environments.
In the meantime I think the advantage goes to those with imagination and an intuitive appreciation for scratch files.