GEORGE CRIES FOR THE DIGITAL ATELIER!
By Steve Danzig
The IDAA presents an alternative, planet-wide forum for digital artists, including a dedicated program within a fine art context of new media and printed work, rather than a prescribed industrial or academic platform of events.
From early digital pioneer Tony Robbin’s entry of mathematica to Jiri David’s lyrical four world leaders crying titled No Compassion, the show will features a body of outstanding works. Sabrina Raaf’s Never Alone, Pigment Eaters and Surban Particle 1 explore both experimental sculptural media and digital photography, and have been profiled in Art In America magazine. Many leading international academics were invited including James Edwards, Peter Patchen and Eric Heller from the USA and Naoe Toshio from Japan. Australian’s Andrew Mamo, Ian Gwilt, Anne-Maree Taranto and leading Indigenous photo-media artist, Leah King-Smith, are among the notables in the 2004 IDAA line up.
The IDAA is in its 4th year and has enjoyed continued growth highlighting more than 4,500 entries received for 2004. Attracting more than 9 million visitors yearly to the web site, 100,000 visiting hard copy exhibitions as well as supporting a database of 75,000 people, makes the IDAA an important event for local and international artists.
Major international institutions, museums, and galleries invest and build important collections from artists such as Raaf, Robbin, Starn Brothers and Rauschenberg, for example, who use immersive digital techniques in the printed form. Subsequently, the private collector base is also growing, as we saw during 2003 Art Basel in Miami USA with several prominent digital print shows taking place including the Danzig and Gartel Wired exhibition. It has been reported that all the major art expos, including the Venice Biennale, highlighted a focus on digital and new media works. It reflects a sign of the times that painting no longer holds court as fine art’s vanguard, but more a broadening of the knowledge base that Post Post-Modernism has fully engaged through conceptual theory.
Digital art and digital printmaking are still sufficiently new and a widely accepted language has not yet emerged to adequately describe them. Lack of definition causes a number of problems for people working with digital media and we are seeing more artist embracing what can only be described as immersive processes between traditional and digital media.
Perhaps a quick definition is in order to set the scene. Digital art is an arbitrary term, as it covers a gamut of different applications. For the most part, digital art is, but is not limited to:
1. Art that was created using or including components of digital technology whose final form is digital in nature (e.g. computer generated animation, music/sound-scape installations, computer-designed sculpture, interactive software web art, multi-media, video, film etc)
2. A digital process integrated with traditional media (e.g. mixed media compositions or even a straight digital print on paper)
There is the issue of how to describe the digital print. Rather than using a generic term, we see artists brand their work more specifically through reference to X media and Y substrate (e.g. pigment inks on DES English Cotton Rag archival paper). The digital file must also be added to the glossary of printmaking terms. (By digital file we mean the original digital image in file form, which is used for printing.) When making limited or unique prints, the digital file is deleted in the same way as a master printer will break printing plates once the edition is printed. Marking/signing will be identical to traditional printmaking protocols since the artist can sign, date and number the work, and provide full certification. There is, however, some controversy over the relevance of the artist’s proof in a digital context, where the production of such prints is not normally necessary to the process.
Terms such as ‘digital fine art’ have been arbitrarily applied, and do not match traditional printmaking standards relating to permanence, color gamut, registration and media. Technology has improved the development of pigment inks and fine art substrates for digital media to meet proper archival standards but permanence remains the key issue for printmaking and new media technology. Major museums and academic institutions have been collecting and presenting digital print media for many years, although not without reservation.
According to the Guggenheim’s associate curator, Jon Ippolito: “Digital art is increasingly on the radar, because it is a time when the challenges it provokes to Jurassic collecting philosophies are starting to be overcome.” The Guggenheim recently launched its Variable Media Initiative to preserve performance, installation, conceptual and digital art. This is a collaborative initiative with the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the Guggenheim Museum, the Walker Art Center, Rhizome.org, the Franklin Furnace Archive, and the Cleveland Performance Art Festival and Archive. These institutions, as a matter of proper research protocol, validate digital art within a contextual fine art language, albeit centric to new media form.
In 2004 it is no longer possible to describe prints produced by mixing traditional and digital technologies as a new art form. For example, Warhol’s digital screen prints of Debbie Harry date back to 1987. In addition, artists like Richard Hamilton, Laurence Gartel, Robert Rauschenberg and the Starn brothers have all been using traditional and digital printmaking techniques for the past 20+ years.
Bonny Pierce Lhotka is a digital pioneer who has documented print transfer extensively via her own techniques for combining inkjet printing with traditional art materials. Bonny founded the digital atelier in the U.S with Karin Schminke and Dorothy Simpson Krause, who have recently released their new book, Techniques for combining inkjet printing with traditional art materials, published by Watson-Guptill. All three artists are featured in the 2004 International Digital Art Awards (www.internationaldigitalart.com).
A wide variety of creative surface effects can be achieved when digital and traditional printmaking processes are combined. For example a rich print surface as a ground can be layered with traditional media such as encaustic, paint and collage. Two things must be ensured: the digital print must not endanger the permanence of the traditional media, and the application of these additional layers must not trigger destructive reactions within the digital print. This requires the highest quality ingredients, and, preferably, an archival varnish or sealer with known, non-reactive properties to separate the digital ground from the top layer.
Joel Seah is a NY based artist whose work demonstrates what can be achieved when digital prints are transferred to paper and other substrates with a press. Seah makes vegetable dye transfer prints using Encad gel transfer on handmade papers that include rice, glace and even banana. This transfer process allows for the variation that is inherent to some traditional printmaking processes and permits the digital printing of substrates that may not transport through a printer. The digital image is initially printed onto the transfer paper, which is then placed face down onto the hydrated substrate and run through a printing press or hand rolled.
Un-digital appearances can be produced from custom substrates used for printing and transferring, including fresco, textured surfaces like spun-bonded polyester, and chine coll�. As the inkjet printer market has matured, some models have been developed that can print directly onto a variety of materials of substantial thickness. The only real limitation is that the material must be sufficiently smooth to be transported by the system’s rollers. Other inkjets, such as the Zund, hold the medium fixed and transport the print heads, allowing printing on very rough surfaces. Custom surfaces can also be combined with the transfer paper mentioned above to produce prints of great subtlety.
An emulsion type transfer can be made onto rough and irregular surfaces by producing digital decals or skins. These are made using commercially available decal sheets or acrylic varnishes and an inkjet accepting coating on polyester film. Soaking in water allows a gentle removal of the decal and its transfer and adhesion to the target surface. Using this method, digital images can be placed onto any three-dimensional objects.
Digital printmaking has extended well beyond the straight inkjet printing process. This goes to show the diversity that exists is only limited by ones imagination.
