Stretch out with your feelings

P. Laidler, Stretch out with your feelings, 2009, Laser Engraving

The orb image depicted in the photograph above has been burnt with a laser into the surface of a black heavy weight cotton based paper. The laser engraved orb image in the paper is a ‘Jedi training remote’ from the film Star Wars. In this instance the training remote image is only visible because of the resulting topography that is burnt (by the laser) into the depth of the paper. Therefore the orb image is described by angle, light and the papers darker fibers that sit beneath the (slightly lighter black) paper surface.

Form follows Fiction:

Upon our first encounter with the ‘Jedi training remote’ (in the film) we find Skywalker struggling to focus his Jedi abilities during the laser training exercise. There after it is decided that Skywalker should be blinded allowing the force to guide his actions instead of his eyesight or to 'let go of his conscious self'. Now blinded by 'the blast shield' Luke sees nothing except darkness (black paper) by using the force Luke is able to render the objects image in his mind (the image on the black paper). Although in his minds eye the object is devoid of physicality yet Skywalker has the ability to sense the training remotes presence in a space (the laser cut depth within the flat space of the paper). The realisation that the Jedi training remote is essentially both image and object creates a sense of mystery around the works visual presence - perhaps drawing further parallels with the order of the Jedi Knight!

Stretch out with your feelings is part of a continuing fascination with oscillations between image and object and fact and fiction. Subsequently I have an interest in film props and replicas where our associations with these objects are generally through their ‘on screen’ image presence. In this context film props are essentially objects that are preceded by their image, they are able to traverse fiction and reality when we consider that fact that they are 'real fictional' objects.

Stretch out with your feelings was conceived around the idea of creating a 'real fiction' where a physical object (an artwork) would be literally formed by some aspect of its fictional reference. In this instance the laser technology was used to initiate the traversing between fiction and reality. Here laser cutting technology refers to both the Jedi remotes fictional function (shooting lasers at Skywalker) and the actual technological process that renders the Jedi training remote visible in Stretch out with your feelings. The self-referential play around the idea of creating real fictions also has a resonance with the rapid advancement in science and computing industries. What was once thought to be only possible in science fiction is now becoming 'science faction'.

The work was included in The International Experimental Engraving Biennial 2011. See IEEB4 catalogue and video of the work installed at the IEEB4 Exhibition, Brancovan Palaces Cultural Center, Romainia.

Getting to know you

It's a very ancient saying,

But a true and honest thought,

That if you become a teacher,

By your pupils you'll be taught.

Identifying practitioners as a means to positioning ones own practice alongside other artists can be an enlightening and frustrating experience. This searching method is often practiced in arts education when students are encouraged to think of their work in a wider context. For the average person this task often involves visiting the library and 'flicking' through books before photocopying pages then sticking the copies in to a sketchbook. This system generally continues until the sketchbook is filled, lost or the next project requires a 'fresh' sketchbook. Either way the compiling of source material can be somewhat adhoc and limiting with regards to how many people may see (and comment) on the collected source material.

One possible alternative for assembling the contextual element associated with the sketchbook is through flickr or more specifically flickrs favorites facility. The flickr site contains a wealth of imagery, ranging from famous art works to uncle Jim's stamp collection - there is no high and low division here. By building a visual data bank (that is confined within a virtual storage facility) the material is always accessible on line and is easily available to share with others (class peers, other online folk, tutors etc) . More over by generating a data bank of imagery in this way (and over an extended period of time) one is able to identify emerging themes, subjects and sensibilities that may have gone unnoticed using the physical sketchbook format.

By having a more democratized access to an individuals 'favorite images' one has a deeper insight as to why someone may produce the work they do and what kind of imagery motivates them. More importantly one is able to visually engage with the thinking behind an individuals words in the physical classroom. In most instance you feel like your 'getting to know them'.

Here are some of my Favourties from the slide show facility in flickr. Feel free to offer insights about my selections.

Also read The Machine Mediated Image within New Perspectives: Art & Design in the Digital Age

Virtuality

Tom Friedman, Untitled (Total), 2000 & Robert Lazzarini, Chair, 2000

"The core challenge of digital art is to establish the relevance of the physical space in relation to virtual space"

John Maeda

Objects conceived with their digital image space intact - that then occupy our (none virtual) environment have a disorientating effect upon our sophisticated visual senses. Interestingly the inclusion of the mediatory experience (printed or electronic) within an art object has to some degree warranted ones physical presence with a 'virtually real' situation. Without this physical and real time interaction the oscillation between real and virtual space is lost. Here the reproduction process provides nothing more than 2D collage.

Prop Idol

P.Laidler 2010

"One is playing with the world referred to by the image and the other world which is the image itself"

Michael Craig Martin, Reading with Shoes

Props

Many props are ordinary objects. However, a prop must read well from the house or on-screen, meaning it must look real to the audience. Many real objects are poorly adapted to the task of looking like themselves to an audience, due to their size, durability, or colour under bright lights, so some props are specially designed to look more like the actual item than the real object would look.

Object traces

Film props have an interesting presence as they are objects that are exceeded by their image. In drawing this kind of object 'the world referred to by the image' refers to yet another image world emanating from the object. What's interesting is the remnants of the object resides within the minimal two dimensional drawing of a three dimensional form.

See links in the image here.

Print on Demand

A machine conceived for a single purpose

it knows no beginning nor end,

perpetually dormant and ubiquitous,

POD cannot and will not be stopped

Soon to be available near you.

Produced in appropriation with

(Thomas Demand & Michael Craig Martin)

The Surface of Experience - staring Boo Bakker

Boo Ritson, The Air Hostess & Conrad Bakker, Commodity [Capital]

Paint becomes print and print becomes paint (the surface conceals and reveals). I have always experienced that the actuality of things is never how you expect them to be, whether this is a disappointment or a pleasant surprise the acknowledgement of the 'experience' is worth remembering. The inclusion of this occurrence within an artwork seems particularly poignant when print is used to disturb the surface - after all our original experience of artworks are often through its printed reproduction.

Crafted Words

"Competence in craft and technique frees the artist to make the broadest and most specific statement; but craft cannot be the end statement. The tinniest automobile is much better constructed than the best work of art"

Edward Higgins

"A medium need not sit in isolated purity. It has always been my contention that the first objective is to achieve a compelling image, and that aim demands a felicity in its implementation.......In accordance with my practice of setting no limits on subject matter, nor stylistic languages of expression, I see no virtue in circumscribing the technical means of realization. The image will always be more important than the rationale of its execution".

Richard Hamilton

"It is no longer necessary to know how to do something, but how to have something done.."

Victor Vasarely

"My belief in process is that if you follow it, it will take you somewhere. But it's not the process itself that is important. I'm not just displaying what the process does. If the process doesn't make something interesting, then throw out the process altogether or alter it by intervening somewhere in the process."

Chuck Close

"I only ever think of technologies in terms of what I want to do with them and how I want something to look ....... I have to say I have limited interest in techniques I'm only interested in how they serve me"

Michael Craig Martin

"I don't think I would say a certain image asks for a certain technique. The mind can work in such a way that the image and technique come as one thought, or possibly one might say there is no thought. One works without thinking how to work"

Jasper Johns

"The manner of painting and materials used seem expendable to me just as long as they serve the idea"

James Rosenquist

Viva Venn diagram

The Cadillac Whiz

I recently read an old Wired article entitled The New Remasters (1996 maybe) during my searches for digital printmaker practitioners. Amongst other things the article got me thinking about two areas of print; firstly the values and distinctions assigned to reproductions and secondly the 'fine art' of reproduction.

The New Remasters summary

In short the article centers around the main protagonist James Danziger and his online fine art reproduction company Artland.com. There is also a cameo appaearence from the Iris Ink-jet printer and not to mention 'the world renown fine art printer' David Adamson.

Danziger's story unfolds shortly after seeing a digital print reproduction produced by Adamson for the photographer Joel Meyerowitz. The reproduction is produced with an Iris inkjet printer (a seminal machine within digital printmaking) that is of such high quality that he (Danziger) decides to investigates the Iris prints marketability. Danziger shows the work to a group of museum curators who subsequently cannot tell the difference between the Iris reproduction and the original print. Further more the Iris print surpasses any poster reproductions produced by museums and galleries - eventually Danziger teams up with Adamson and Artland.com begins producing high-end reproduction prints.

"Iris printing has become the Cadillac of digital reproduction" and "Adamson was a whiz at making Iris reproductions"

Amongst other commentators Danziger highlights Adamson's mastery of the Iris as an integral contribution toward producing the unique kind of reproduction that only Artland.com offers.

"The Iris print falls somewhere between self-betterment and decoration"

Around 75% of Adamson's reproduction process uses automated colour management methods, the other 25% is left to Adamson's experience and interpretation. The intuitive part (the 25%) of the the workflow is in the colour balancing which Adamson describes as the place where 'there is still some judgement involved'. Here Adamson utilises his experience of Iris printing by selectively bringing out crucial nuances that can get lost in the translation from the 'digital matrix' to the printed image.

The reproductive production within a fine art printmaking context got me thinking about a piece of writing entitled Endangered Species by the British Artist Richard Hamilton. Throughout Hamilton's experience of working with an array of traditional Master Printers he observed that the 'most admirable print craftsman' were those who had been involved in some reproductive endeavour. Hamilton summaries that the printer's transcription sensibilities were testament to the demands of reproductive work where the best printers "polished their genius on the mundane tasks of translating between media".

Hamilton has also been an advocate for selecting printers based upon what he considers to be their particular strength and therefore which printer is best suited to a specific project. More over it is often said in fine art printmaking circles that when an artist works with a specific studio/Master Printer they will be adopting the house style of that studio in their work.

I find the house style attribute intriguing when applied to high-end reproductions, copies, replica's or facsimiles. A reproduction created in this way assumes a richer provenance and therefore added value, maybe even a unique 'synthesised aura'

"I want the best copy. The only copy. The most expensive copy. I want James Joyce's Chamber Music. I want the 1907 version, the "variant" the first variant, [...] I want the earliest copy on record. I want the copy that is rarer than anyone had previously dreamed of. I want the copy the dreams"

Richard Prince, Bringing It all Back Home, 1988

Shore to be Shore!

Stephen Shore, West Third Street, Parkersberg, West Virginia, May 16, 1974

Found an interesting video link the other day that got me on to thinking about Michael Polanyi's tacit knowledge and photos amongst other things. The link is a short documentary entitled American Beauty about the Photographer Stephen Shore who describes elements of his practice. Shores methodology was the bit that subsequently reminded me of Polanyi's famous aphorism "We know more then we can tell".

With a certain sense of irony Shore (in his own words) describes a 'wordless' thinking that takes place during the creation of one of his photographs.

"Most people presume thinking has to do with words that are either spoken or thought, where as visual thinking does not have these words"

Shore goes on to inform us that he spent ten years learning the formal properties of photography. Because of this sustained period of learning Shore comments that he does not (consciously) need to think about these formalistic devices when taking photos. Similar to the forging of a 'tacit knowing' much of the previous conscious picture making strategies have receded into Shores subconscious, leaving mostly instinctual decisions. By essentially freeing the mind from directly thinking about these elements of the work Shore is able to 'think' about where he is going with the picture. This and other descriptions by Shore appear comparable to an iterative form of learning, common to the properties of tacit knowledge.

Other things:

Shore utilizes the inherent qualitative aspects of the large format photograph such as clarity and detail for example. These qualities provide Shore with the visual representation of what he describes as a 'heightened state of awareness,' equally pertinent toward his interest with a clear and focused attention of the everyday world.

One particular insight by Shore regarding the experience of time through the photographic image made me think of the photograph and its relationship to reality. Shore explains the speed with which we experience a photographic image when looking at the print (normally a few secs) - compared with the actuality of time that can reside within a photograph (exposure time). The experience of time through a photograph is allusive to us although visually acknowledgeable, as Shore summaries in saying "there is a sense of time being compressed in a photo". It is this reminder of how image and reality differ that got me thinking about my own interest in the prominence of image over reality.

"The camera in all its manifestations is our god, dispensing what we mistakenly take to be truth. The photograph is the modern world" - Thomas Lawson

With this in mind it's amusing to consider the photographic exposure length as having the prevailing influence upon the time with which we can only experience the images depiction of reality. Or a kind of synesthesia where the exposure length maybe experienced as 'weight', here a seven-minute exposure compared to that of a two second would feel lighter! There's possibly an artwork in here somewhere!