Combinatorial rigidity theory seeks to describe the rigidity or flexibility of bar-joint frameworks in R d in terms of the structure of the underlying graph G. The goal of this article is to broaden the foundations of combinatorial rigidity theory by replacing G with an arbitrary representable matroid M. The ideas of rigidity independence and parallel independence, as well as Laman’s and Recski’s combinatorial characterizations of 2-dimensional rigidity for graphs, can naturally be extended to this wider setting. As we explain, many of these fundamental concepts really depend only on the matroid associated with G (or its Tutte polynomial), and have little to do with the special nature of graphic matroids or the field R. Our main result is a “nesting theorem ” relating the various kinds of independence. Immediate corollaries include generalizations of Laman’s Theorem, as well as the equality of 2-rigidity and 2-parallel independence. A key tool in our study is the space of photos of M, a natural algebraic variety whose irreducibility is closely related to the notions of rigidity independence and parallel independence. The number of points on this variety, when working over a finite field, turns out to be an interesting Tutte polynomial evaluation.

We study straight-line drawings of non-planar graphs with few slopes. Interval graphs, co-comparability graphs and AT-free graphs are shown to have have drawings in which the number of slopes is bounded by the maximum degree. We prove that graphs of bounded degree and bounded treewidth have drawings with O(log n) slopes. Finally we prove that every graph has a drawing with one bend per edge, in which the number of slopes is at most one more than the maximum degree. In a companion paper, planar drawings of graphs with few slopes are also considered.