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laurarosser · 8 years ago

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What is the post-digital era? Notes from the Post Digital Print Conference, Wroclaw.

Paul Laidler (UWE) Paper.

At the 2017 Post Digital Printmaking conference, Paul Laidler who is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Fine Print Research, talked about looking through the eyes of machines as humans in terms of digital print. Identifying the post-digital era as one where we are not in the position to offer conclusions, more so we are proposing questions. The post digital age marks a period of rapidly changing technology and opportunity.

Artists are increasingly asking machinery to do things that it wasn’t intended to do. Such as Jack Youngblood’s manipulation of inkjet printers and overlaying prints in ‘Spate’ (2003) and Richard Hamilton creating impasto inkjets prints, creating a 2.5D industrial and technical process.

Arthur Buxton employs mobile technology in ‘Colourstories’ (2014 to date) a free web-based app that lets users create colour swatches and individual colour pallets from their own personal photos. When users upload photographs to the website a unique pallet is created which tells a story and is a personal history in colour. One additional important element that should not be overlooked in Buxton’s ‘Colourstories’ is that it encourages users to make use of digital images that often just sit as data or bytes on a hard drive.

What is the position of analogue artworks in the digital, or post-digital era and how do they support one another? The questions about the digital should not be, what can we do? And should be, why are we doing this?

Labour is an important consideration for print based practitioners and post digital printmakers perhaps have a heightened awareness of time/duration and the immediacy offered by a digital relationship. We are amidst a culture of instant gratification, with print on demand and instant production. However, certain things cannot be reduced to binary, which is where post digital print is located. Some artists embrace the slow movement, such as Estella Molina’s work where she combines digital print with photogravure and labour is critical to the intent. In contrast, the work ‘Coded’ (?) by Ruth Irvine tested immediacy and applied algorithmic language to physical activities.

Laidler described these post digital artisans as being ‘digitally mindful’. He talked of digital natives who were born in the 1990’s who were born amidst a digital revolution. Digital natives are not being taught by digital natives, yet. What is the implication of this is?

Lastly, Laidler outlined a key concern that resonates with me, in that the post digital conversation is not about how we technically master these tools that is critical/significant, rather it is the consequences of how these tools penetrate and reshape the way we think about making work.

Pawel Puzio (Wroclaw)

Pawel Puzio from Wroclaw Academy of Fine Art is interested in the digital glitch and researching the field of malfunction-based. Digital media is the medium Puzio elects as his channel for expression, a method of communication or data exchange. There are specific medium traits in traditional media, such as screen printed halftone marks or a soft drypoint line or analogue photographic grain. I don’t believe that new digital media reveals the same distinct characteristics. Puzio referred to ‘transparency’ as a term often used in reference to digital media, referencing how the media becomes transparent. As in CGI models in the cinema and HD television with high resolution and bright/vivid colours creating ‘hyper-reality’. We cannot experience the detail and intensity of colour in real life. Similarly are medium specific traits considered as artefacts?

Puzio defined a need to mediate without mediation. He proposed that the digital medium is failing at becoming ‘transparent’, because of digital malfunctions, noise, glitch and errors. Glitch art is a field that has been well documented and explored by Mark Nunes, et al(?).

Puzio discussed: Rosa Menkman ‘DCT:Syhoning’ (?) and ‘Mytopia’ (2015), both digital works that experience virtual reality; Mattiew St. Pierre’s ‘Melted ice cream’ and ‘Post Forward’ are created from corrupted digital files; Matthew Pumner Fernandez used corrupted files to make 3D models; Peter Nory employs incorrect and glitch google earth maps; Pawel Puzio himself produces works using data corruption techniques which he demonstrated at the conference; The method could be compared to an algorithm, a set of procedures that he has tested and uses to produce glitch or error art, for example, following measured steps by moving between sound and bitmap files to corrupt the image. Finding and replacing characters in the code.

Puzio demonstrated two tutorials on how to make glitch art.

In notepad (You can see the language and the code).The below steps will all corrupt the image:- choose 2 characters to find and replace. delete sections of the code.Copy part of the code and paste elsewhere.

In odacity. Upload a bitmap file as dataPlay as a sound biteAdd effect: base, echo, etc.Export back to a bitmap file - image will be distorted from original source.

Note: Also see Saunders, G., & Miles, R. (date?) Printmaking in the 21st Century http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/p/prints-21st-century/

Karen Oremus (Zayed Univerity, UAE)

Karen has a spiritual/scientific interest in her work. And focus on digital corruptions.

The vicissitudes of printmaking practice in the post digital era.

‘New technologies are the new media of the redefined multiple, creating multiple meanings of the multiple’

There are infinite digital editions (see photograph in Evernote), consider YouTube, Dropbox, Yahoo, Facebook, PayPal, tumbler, et al.

A fixed multiple has given way to a more flexible multiple. With more temporal notions of the matrix and the edition influenced by Deleuze’s ‘Difference and Repetition’ (1968).

(Different words for the multiple: numerous, repetition, various, different, assorted, multiform. All of which hint towards individuality).

The print departments at Auburn and Zayed universities collaborated virtually in an online project, creating an infinite edition.

Works produced by Karens students included:

Rust prints on the beach(this would work well for stage one) Bury metallic objects (that rust) in the sand. Lay canvas or paper onto of them. Dig them up two weeks later.

2. Ayesha Hadir: shadow prints projections and shadows from objects

3. Shaikha Fahed: Photo shoot inspired wood cuts starting point is the photo shoot. Takes the images into intaglio and woodcut. Creating printed installations, with lights and shadows projected onto the woodcuts.

Katarzyna Zimma (Lodz University of technology)

Edge Effects: printmaking as an inter-medium

Katarzyna Zimma approaches her practice from a traditional print perspective. She uses the structures of permaculture as a design strategy, ‘use edges and value the marginal’ (Bill Mollison, 1978).

Zimma references edge effects in terms of the ecosystem, specifically coastal boundaries of water and land.

Dick Higgins created the ‘Intermedia chart’ (1995) to demonstrate the concept of intermedia and the relationship with Fluxus, which operated in the space between media. Considering the ‘in-between’ the ‘inter‘, Higgins’s diagram highlights boundaries between areas. In what way is post digital printmaking defined as inter-medium? Zimma discussed this concept in relation to the work of Sarah Jane Lawton, whose practice is transdisciplinary, with centrality being the engagement and contribution of others. Lawton presented a paper at Impact9 and seeks out a social practice. ‘She situates her practice on the margins of disciplines and works with models of engagement to reach individuals and communities.’ (Artists own website)

Within my social practice, would the planning of events to create unknown errors be better understood if I highlight the crossed (often overlapping) areas between: participant, artists and error?

Zatarzyna Zimna’s video work ‘Layers’ (2013) becomes an additional record of the process to accompany the work.

‘Colouring Book’ (at Impact9) invited viewers to colour in the white spaces of the black and white prints. The print became a field of exchange, between artist and audience.

‘Memo Game’ is a participatory game playing artwork, consisting of tiles engraved and linocut prints.

(see Evernote slide photographs) “I seek out the social contact that ‘material engagement’ can inspire through printmaking and once my tool-kits have been applied to the workshop settings, they confront one person with another, offering as Basting explains, a gift of real-time moment.” (Sarah Jane Lawton, Printmaking as a model of engagement, IMPACT9, China Academy of Art Press, Hangzhou, 2015, 0. 72-82)

’A print in the post-print age or the post-digital age, is actually often the same print as before, but saturated with different content’.

“…it can be said that printmaking in the post digital age should make more if its own resources - its inner dichtimonies and unlimited potential to create boundary zones with other media and life - in order to continually Renew.”

original | copy

high | popular

change | repetition

absence | presence

tradition | innovation

Martin Surzycki (Wroclaw, Poland)

‘The architecture of printing matrix’

Surzycki talked about the sculptural qualities of the printing matrix in relating his heavily embossed prints. He identifies that there is a degree of uncertainty in the matrix, because of the way he makes his plates/images.

The substrate, the paper, is an important element, explaining it is not anonymous.

Michelle Mirilo (California College of the Arts, San Fransisco)

‘Shifting identities: at the intersection of printmaking and technology’

The breadth of contemporary print is wide and interdisciplinary. Contemporary tools are being used to conceive contemporary ideas. On the other hand, DIY and make it yourself culture is prominent in art practices. Michelle had a residency ay Bullseye Glass where she experiented with powder printing (screen printing on glass). Her exhibition ‘A measure of time’ demonstrated Michelles archival practice, working with lost, found and collected. She had lots of trials and errors produced the work for the show, with many experiments that were unsuccessful.

Print is fixed | Glass is ephemeral.

Michelle’s prints were beautifully delicate and easily broken. The images were of ID cards and were ID cards, not images.

The delicacy of language played a role in the concept for this fragile work and the venerability or conversations and relationships influenced Michelle's choice of material and reseated into digital decals.

Andreas Gustos (Poland)

‘Gene, Meme, Techne’

Andreas has a background in architecture and is a sound / digital artist.

Informare/information: To form, two shape.

Algorithm: a series of 0s and 1s make a pyramid structure.

Conway's Game of Life: there are four rules for the game, consisting of black and white grids. Active/Dead, 0/1 Today/Tomorrow *White/Black - justification for black/white prints, correct/incorrect, 0/1

Bethan Hughes

‘print_screen: surface, depth and the 3d rendered image’

*Ryan Bishop, et al. ‘The Post Digital …’ get this book, contains works produced post internet (Avery Singer, Mark Leckey, Ed Atkins. Notes in black notebook).

Words used: Old and new analogue, post internet.

Beth co produced, collaborated with the software.

*’To print is to capture, to preserve’ (Beth Hughes).

* The printed page enables the viewer to pause, to reflect. This is in contrast with notions of temporality (def: the state of existing within or having some relationship with time.) which often relates to social art work.

Origamni factory - buy kozo that for digital printing.

Digital tools are no longer not in use or unobtainable. Sidsel Meineche Hansen ‘Second Sex War’ combines virtual reality with cnc woodcuts.

Also see notes from Endi’s Poskovic’s talk.

Marta Anna Raczek-Karcz (Krakaw Faculty of Graphic Arts)

‘Perfection and Glitch: The influence of digital thinking on polish contemporary printmaking.’

The Matrix used to be hidden from the viewer and never exposed. It can now be a key subject fo an exhibition, such as in the ‘Graphic art: a play of art’ exhibition that was dedicated to the matrix.

Artists have been exposing the glitch, also known as error, rather than hiding them and using them in their favour. Errors are being used to an artists advantage.

Kamil Kullirek ‘Typography of War’ (2015). 3 keys words relate to his work: hypertextuality, variability and HD.

Lev Manovich’s states in his book ‘The Language of New Media’ (1999) that, as far as the cultural languages are concerned, ‘new media is old media’ . A tool is just a tool it is what you do with it.

Iman Moradi wrote the essay ‘Glitch Aesthetics’ (2004) and later his book ‘’Glitch: Designing Imperfection’, about the glitch being rewarding. The process of experimentation: trial: error: repetition.

Moradi describes complexity and taking perfection in data transfer for granted.

In Glitch Aesthetics Moradi describes:

Pure Glitch as something we see everyday. An error that occurred because of a malfunction and is unexpected. ‘The Pure Glitch’ is, therefore, an unpremeditated digital artefact, which may or may not have its own aesthetic merits.; (Moradi, 2.1.2. , p.10, 2004)

Glitch alike is a term created by an artist (?) which Moradi defines as a collection of digital artefacts that resemble visual aspects of real glitches found in their original habitat.

http://www.organised.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Moradi-Iman-2004-Glitch-Aesthetics.pdf

Tristan Spill (2003) ‘Visual Glitches’

Digits (1s and 0s) digit - Repetition refers to mimicryUpdate | upgrade - has been fetishized, we constantly want better. More notes in notebook.

‘We remember less and less because we think google will remember it for us’ (Marta) We need to save data in our minds not just on computers.

Lisa Rakete, Incubator session (Finland Uni)

Romano ‘Copy Shop’ lyrics ‘who is the thief? who is the genius?’Print is an information carrier, not always about printmaking on gallery walls. It is not so much about digitisation or print, but how digital media is changing our culture. Marshall McLuhan (and Quentin Fore) ‘The medium is the message’, (predicted the internet?)

‘the book is an extension of the eye’ Marshall McLuhan

"The medium is the message" is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in any message it would transmit or convey, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived (wiki).

The Phonetic Alphabet. Phonetic alphabet, fragments. They mean nothing on their own (?). There is a relationship between the letters.

‘Post digital print’ A Ludovico ‘books are still around and not dead.

What are the qualities of print? If for example, you look at a printed zine. It is interactive; you can make marks on it; it is tactile; flip the pages; smell it; it is physical; you can highlight it with a pen; you can hear the pages being folded. The Body removers the movements, the feel, the touch, the smell.

Laura Pfeiffer, made an archive of the traces people left in books in the work ‘Lessespuren’. The Archive may be in the form of container or bookshelf. How do we archive digital media? It is harder to loose physical books or paper. Computer back ups, lost files and corrupted files are a feature of contemporary culture.

Pediapress is a website that enables you to edit and print your wikipedia search as a book. Please note: Wikipedia searches are often edited 2 days ago. The printing service exists because people want to archive, to touch, to engage in physical print.

News from the global village: printmaking is not dead. Print is slow.

Why is ‘coding for beginners’ physical printed? It is out ion date the next day.

New York Times costs $14million online, $10million physical subscriptions. The value of print is changing. It was assumed to be of high value, but that is changing. The notion is that digital equals free, a democratic space where you don’t have to pay to be there. This is of course no longer true, apple for example are making a lot of money from the www.

Organisation and structurePrint is linear (Think of arranging the group to stand in order). The line becomes the continuum / organisation of life. Text is linear, consider libraries and the way we experience time.

Information is organised in groups (Think of standing by the person/people you know). In the digital world, it is more organic, it can change quickly and grouping is based on relationships.

2000 years of linear print history. Early amazing page was very linear, more like an encyclopaedia entry, like a p.book. Because that was all people knew.

Open source publishingCreate your own language rather than paying high companies, HTML etc. Reflect on the cultural value of this and contextualise.

Transmedia | Coexisting media

These may be better terms than ‘Post print’ ‘Post digital’

The post digital mindset. We read in linear ways. We speak and digest letters in words. We read left too write, often digesting only the first and last letters. That is why we are able to digest texts and are able to read large volumes. When we move through a landscape we digest fragments, not the entirety.

Is this a post digital mindset? Culture on instant gratification. There is a duality of mediums, with + and - for digital and print.

The nostalgia of analogue is troublesome. ‘The electronic revolution’ book. The speed at which things are becoming obsolete is getting faster and faster. Can you future proof research, prints or digital work? Where and what is the true archive. The digital world is time limited, we cant keep up. There is resurgence of vinyl and we have the choice to use digital, analogue, paper, or none of the above. There is a conscious decision to play a record or Spotify, a conscious decision to listen, to engage; an act(ion).

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