Siegert, B. (2015) ‘Waterlines: Striated and Smooth Spaces as Techniques of Ship Design’, in Cultural Techniques: Grids, Filters, Doors, and Other Articulations of the Real. Translated by G. Winthrop-Young. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. 147–163.

In ‘Waterlines’, Siegert shows how a history of design can be written through seemingly minor graphical operations rather than through stylistic evolution or individual invention. Shipbuilding becomes design when construction migrates onto paper: projection, scaling, grids, curves and waterlines transform the hull into an object that can be tested, varied and governed before material execution. The line is therefore not a neutral representation but an ontologically open operative device whose agencies shift across workshops, drawing offices, navigation practices and mathematical techniques. Siegert’s method traces transfers between smooth and striated spaces, especially the movement from embodied shipwright knowledge to paper-based experimentation and from maritime observation to contour systems. The bridge to Latour’s immutable mobiles is explicit: knowledge gains power through transportable inscriptions that preserve relations while changing location. The chapter thereby joins media archaeology, architectural drawing and history of science around a shared proposition: representation becomes productive when it reorganises the material conditions of experimentation.