Daily Finger Frame is a digital drawing project which was started on 18 February 2011. It is one of the first art projects to use an app as an integral part of the creative process. Once a day, I draw on the previous day’s image and modify it. Each new image is numbered and replaces yesterday’s one to create an open-ended story, a story without end. Technique used: finger drawing on a smartphone screen.
Where did the idea of doing a drawing a day came from?
Horacio Cassinelli: I was already drawing daily in my sketchbooks as a student but what interested me with this project was the idea of the same drawing being modified day after day. It changes and evolves, like our body cells during our lifetime. We move from drawing to drawing and end up with something completely unexpected. We didn’t see it coming at all.
Do you use a stylus pen?
HC: no, I learned to draw without seeing the tip of my finger. A smartphone screen is a very small and intimate space which contains worlds surprisingly wide. It’s like a portable, pocket-sized studio. I often zoom into the image to draw details and lose sight of the whole picture, just like when you’re in front of a large-format painting.
What is left of the very first drawing now, so many years later?
HC: Probably not a pixel! Just like the ship of Theseus in Greek mythology, whose many parts were replaced one by one during the course of its journey, the initial drawing has changed in its entirety.
Does the Daily Finger Frame tell a story?
HC: It tells many stories. Some have already started off-screen when you come across them, others have no ending, we just move away from them. Characters, people, animals, landscapes come and go. The process is like that of Russian dolls, one image always comes out of the previous one and it never ends. Digital technology is the perfect medium for that.
DFF App

Behind the screen
Flipbook
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