Research

I wrote my BA dissertation on how the established framework of authenticity and auratic value of art can expand to include contemporary arts practices, such as digital art, or digital-analogue hybrids. This I explore through incorporating analogue methods into my digital workflows, and combining physical and technical techniques and outcomes in projects. I have also done artistic research in the print room, through making plates with digital methods before printing them with traditional tools.

TerraPen Drypoint Print

In a print room workshop, I was allowed to test image making using a TerraPen machine. Playing around with a variety of settings, we manipulated photographs into lines that could be sent to and read by the TerraPen, which in this case was fitted with a needle. This allowed it to engrave our linework into copper plates.

We inked up the finished plates, before putting them through presses in the same you would any other intaglio print. On first glance, the print just looks like squiggles, but within them there hides an image.

Here it is next to a different print of the same motif, made a week prior with a hand-etched plate. Their visual qualities are distinctly different, and although the earlier parts of the hybrid process was less physical, they both presented challenges and pitfalls for experimentation.

Relief Print with Laser Cutter

Heading back to the print room, I vectorised a digital drawing of some trees in Illustrator, which was then exported and sent to a lasercut machine. It then got engraved into a MDF plate, and was ready for printing.

This approach would also be interesting to expand further for pattern printmaking. I tried my hand at this with only one plate at my disposition, but it could be more efficient or experimental through the ability to make multiple copies for testing and colour variation.

This method also works with photographs, if they are bitmapped before vectorisation. For comparison’s sake, I used to same image my drypoint plate was made with. As the laser cutter is faster, the image could be more detailed, whereas the time limitaion of the TerraPen made for a more abstract outcome. The prints show evidence of both methods and materials; the drypoint lines are slightly smudged, but also smoother, in comparison to the relief plate’s wooden texture. The combination of new technology and traditional methods has developed new techniques and tools that present new and interesting outcomes, and ways of approaching what is possible through printmaking.