Draft 1
Digital printers are fundamental tools used in our design process and they are supposed to make exact copies. Printing anything several times should result in it looking exactly the same. However, it never quite works out that way especially with inkjet printers. The color settings, alignment and resolutions can have a great impact on the printing outcomes, thus making the design outcome somewhat unpredictable. As a result, questions raised in my head while working with the printers this week: To what extent can the printing process affect the original design? How do we value the imperfections? How to define the fine line between it being a mistake/error or an unexpected/unplanned design breakthrough?
Draft 2
To jump out of the usual way of designing which is by rational, how can we generate visual representation from the possibility of movement and change rather than unflappable rationality? As a result, the second week I explored further with digital printing in layers, including changing the values in resolution, offsets, and colors. My expectations of how the printing outcome would be and what it actually has become clashes even more. When I switch the colors of the color layers, the entire vibe of the image changes. The change in resolutions and offsets results have yielded frozen moments of each layers, which recorded the printing process. This resonate with Martin Lister’s point illustrated in his book Photographic Image in Digital Culture that when software and image collide, the results are not just a new, processual picture, but also a shift with implications for how we think about representation, memory, time, and identity (Lister, 2013). I think this also somewhat answers my question from last week that to see the outcome as an unexpected design breakthrough rather than it being a mistake, it has to generate a representation, memory, time or identity, which makes the irrational outcome meaningful.
Reference:
The Photographic Image in Digital Culture, edited by Martin Lister, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/detail.action?docID=1415807.
Draft 3
Digital printers are fundamental tools used in our design process and they are supposed to make exact copies. Printing anything several times should result in it looking exactly the same. However, it never quite works out that way especially with inkjet printers. The color settings, alignment and resolutions can have a great impact on the printing outcomes, thus making the design outcome somewhat unpredictable.
Initially I was wondering to what extent can the printing process affect the original design and how to define the fine line between the printing imperfection being a mistake or an unexpected design breakthrough. I then started to explore how we can generate visual representation from the possibility of movement and, breaking the usual way of designing which is by rationale.
As a result, I worked with digital printing in layers, including changing the values in resolution, offsets, and colors; repeated the same procedures and noted each iteration down. My expectations of how the printing outcome would be and what it actually has become clashes even more. When I switch the colors of the color layers, the entire vibe of the image changes. The change in resolutions and offsets results have yielded frozen moments of each layers, which reveal the printing systems and the mechanism. This resonate with Martin Lister’s point illustrated in his book Photographic Image in Digital Culture that when software and image collide, the results are not just a new, processual picture, but also a shift with implications for how we think about representation, memory, time, and identity (Lister, 2013). I think this also somewhat answers my question from last week that to see the outcome as an unexpected design breakthrough rather than it being a mistake, it has to generate a representation, memory, time or identity, which makes the irrational outcome meaningful.
The artist Alan Skees had a series of work called American Glitch which he plays around with the idea of processing code using digital slit-scan ink jet print (Matney, 2019). In one of his interview, he stated that digital art is in the canon of printing age. As our technology advances, printed matters are facing dramatic challenges however Alan Skees believes digital art is just an evolution of printmaking because the code is the fixed matrix that imagery is derived from. It is the plate or stone in the digital age (Matney, 2019). I totally agree with him. The textures and details as well as the expectation in the printed matters adds so much weight to the work which can never be rendered/reproduced in digital work.
Reference:
The Photographic Image in Digital Culture, edited by Martin Lister, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/detail.action?docID=1415807.
Matney, J., 2019. Conversation with Kristin and Alan Skees — Linda Matney Gallery. [online] Linda Matney Gallery. Available at: <https://www.lindamatneygallery.com/news/2019/9/27/kristinandalanskees> [Accessed 1 February 2022].