The Resolution

More and more images emerged through the production of Beautiful Brain than any other piece created for this project. Besides the nightmare process of Backtracking, after composing the template of the final image multiple versions emerged from the copy machine. In playing with density, the intensification of the black shades of the original, I blackened the black box even more. In addition to these slight variations, I copied the original outline with the intention of digitally manipulating it to invert the colors, turning the base black and the outline white. While intrigued by the result, something of the theory of blackboxing is lost when the black shading extends beyond the boundary of the computer image.

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Photo or Scan

After much deliberation, I have decided that I prefer the aesthetics of the photographed cut and paste project featured in Signs of Bleeding opposed to the full color scans I made earlier. The scans remove the texture. Yes, they make it seem more clinical, perhaps more medical, but I want visceral. I want the body to be present. The marks of my hand to be seen. Judge for yourself!

 

Ink High

Sharpies. A black sharpie clearly was the proper tool for coloring in the outline for my typographic image of the black boxed computer. I am pleased that this project finally seems to be on the up and up – after the disaster that was recorded in Backtracking. Today I took my original pencil sketch and made some photocopies. The copy machine created higher contract, deepening the lines and making them more crisp. Like my project last night, the step of coloring in the block letters seemed to take longer than I anticipated. I am happy with the results, though, and will be interested to see how I like the scan tomorrow (intending to play up the density to make the black as saturated as possible) versus the physical image in front of me.

Unfortunately I like the outline image the best, but that would defeat the purpose of the black box.

 

Realization. Tomorrow I may try to invert the colors on the copy made today from the original pencil trace. See if I can get a full black image with white outlines of the letters. Here is to hoping.

When Words Bleed

This may be my favorite project up to this point. Tonight I finished 2/3 of the Cut & Paste project I began discussing in an earlier post, Cut and Paste, Scissors and Glue. Or Tape. I used the paragraph I wrote previously, and began by cutting up phrases. Each line was split after each end stop period. I then had a pile of phrases which I scrambled and taped back into a paragraph-like configuration on a clean sheet of paper.

 

The act of cutting up the page seemed inherently violent. I began to think of blood, and decided to simulate a blood spatter on the page.

 

Here we have the first panel of the series. Next, I took the same paragraph and cut it up into individual words. It took a surprisingly long time to rearrange the words and secure them to a new sheet of paper, but alas we have:

 

More cutting, more violence, more blood.

 

A third panel will join these two that will be the words in a chaotic scramble, a deep blood stain across. I like these photographs of the products quite a bit, taken with my iPad and cropped and auto-enhanced with the iPad as well. I am going to scan them tomorrow as well to see which version I like best and which will be dubbed the Result. Stay tuned.

Backtracking

My living room floor is currently in a state of epic disorder. Today I began working on the image that was my fist conception for this project. The Beautiful Brain arose from a conversation on black boxing new computers and technology mixed with a personal memory of the oddest and, perhaps, the most flattering compliment I have ever received: “I want to break open your head to see your beautiful brain.” Something about this phrase stuck with me. It crept into my mind when thinking about black boxing and the desire to get at the interior, to see how something works even if you don’t understand what you will find there. I’ve juggled many different ideas of how to express this on the page and today took up the challenge. We begin with a cut out of a basic computer clip art image:

I then painted the image black (I know…really original approach to demonstrating the “black box”). My goal was to make the paint thin enough that some details of the image would still come through in the right light.

Now came the challenge of incorporating the quote. I really want this image to clearly display the mark of my hand. I want it to look manipulated by a person. So I cut out letters and began to trace.

After I was done tracing I began painting in the letters. And I hated it.

My next attempt incorporated a quick glitch art using the original computer image above. I changed the .bit to a .txt to have a text representation of the computer image. This attempt was meant to also reveal what was behind or inside the image as much as the final product should speak to the problem of black boxing more generally. After a few manipulations I ended up with the following image:

And I still hated it. Time for a new plan of action.

I had started to think about creating a typography image and then it struck me. The quote should be the computer. The black box should be composed of the letters. So I began:

After some measuring and plenty of erasing, I arrived at the completed trace:

Here is my template. I am rather pleased with it at this stage. My next steps will be to make some photocopies of it to have different templates to play with. I may use the light box to trace onto a clean piece of paper. Filling the letters in black should give the illusion of a black box in the shape of a computer. Originally I intended the Beautiful Brain to be a duo image, with one computer image and one of my own profile, both blacked out, both with the same quote. We will see if that will work out with this new approach.

Regurgitating the Ghost Fork

This project began a few month back with a post on the blog for the Media Archaeology, Media Poetics course (in which I am enrolled and creating this website for). A week where we looked at copy machines and copy art, I felt the urge to experiment myself. Hands on experience seemed the best path. To quote myself:

I have fond memories of playing with the giant copy machine as a child at my mother’s office. Such thoughts made me incredibly excited to read and inspired by Copy Art. The possibilities seemed endless! And, partially frightening, as the text asks “Does the machine have a creative soul of its own? One begins to wonder” (107). During my experiment creating some copier “art” (in scare quotes because I am not sure I would label my results as such), I had to wonder if the machine was influencing my intent. And what I discovered is that it is incredibly difficult, and would take significantly more time in planning a piece than I dedicated today. I made two pieces to explore two basic concepts of copier art, zoom and density….My second experiment was in density, or the saturation of image. This was accomplished by using the same source material, in this case a large fork with pasta, moving it about and changing the input. We can call this one “Ghost Fork.” I was expecting larger contrast between the lightest setting and the darkest, but overall I am pleased with the results:After a few minutes experimenting, the controls of the machine became familiar, and I found myself laughing and smiling with excitement as things turned out and frustrated and scoffing when they did not. I was reminded of the instant gratification benefit of embarking on creative endeavors such as these described in Copy Art.

 (for the full post see “Ghost Fork” and “March of the Sad Lady”)

Letting a piece of work lose on the internet takes it out of the control of the artist, which can have both adverse and positive effects. In this instance, a comment on the original post drove the slight alteration of the final product: “The machine that produced this food image, a photocopier, would never require such spaghetti.” This phrase stuck with me, changed the way I viewed the original and how I wanted to move forward to a new iteration. The machine is highlighted, the process is made evident in the quote. By copying the .jpeg file into Word, a landscape oriented document, I added the quote as a caption to the original image. Then, using the Snipping Tool, I turned the compiled piece into another .jpeg to compose the Result of Ghost Fork.

The words change the reading, influencing the viewer to consider not only the image but also the process behind its creation. My original intent was to hand write in the caption, trace it off of a printed document in order to maintain some uniformity. I even printed out the words and was prepared to use a light box to trace onto the “Ghost Fork” source, but changed my mind. I wanted my hand to be removed from it. While I may be the “creator” (probably more like the “compiler”), the original artist and designer of the magazine cut out source material, the copy machine, those who commented on the original post, Word, this blog, could all be seen as artists of the piece.  It is free and limitlessly reproduced on each screen of each person who views the page. Like a specter, it is beyond my own time, reality, and dimension of space.

Paper Flowers, Take 2

After experimenting with printing flowers using a template of tape to remove space, I decided to try to recreate the result with more precision. Tonight I created two products that resulted in a myriad of final pieces. The two images are inverses, one the filling of the flower and the other the outline of the flower.

 

I began with the filled images and, with the measuring tape back in hand, created a Word document to mirror the image and, when printed, would fill in the blanks. The font is Courier New, pt 7. Throughout the page the word “stem” or “petal” repeats, depending on which section the word would be covering. The first printing went without incident, but in an attempt to make it more textured and dimensional, I adjusted the Word document and tried to add layers of ink to the detriment of the paper.

As you see, the crumpled page was only further damaged as I pulled away the tape, turning the printer paper to the texture of tissue paper. This thought was the first moment of thinking of dimensionality, texture, and tactility arising from a process where the usual aim is clean, crisp, flat, and unobtrusive. The second image, the background of the flower, yielded similar results, but the pieced back together tape flower proved particularly intriguing.

Throughout the experiment and test, however, my focus landed on the tape. What I assumed would be the byproduct, disposable and forgotten, turned into my landing ground for this piece. Head over to The Results to check out the Ink & Paper Series.

Tape

There is something rewarding about using tape and scissors to create an item to be digitally manipulated. Tonight I began trying to figure out ways to create templates, frames in which to print words that then peel away into other images and shapes. Inspiration from Steve McCaffery. In my quest to find ways to recreate similar aesthetics I began with a test page. I happen to have some very ineffective packing tape (dried out and not quite sticky anymore) that I could cut up into shapes, stick to the paper, and peel away with ease and relative non-damage to the page. I ran across the first problem when the heat of the inkjet printer warmed the tape and made it adhere to the paper, causing some damage to paper. I am curious to see how the damaged paper will scan in the copier, if the texture will create a different result when passed through the machine. After the test, I became enamored with the pulled off tape even more so than the paper. All of the printed on tape, delicate and easily smudged away, is currently stuck to my living room wall, waiting until I have a stroke of inspiration how to work with the tape and not the paper.

The second attempt of the night, to create an image, in this case a few flowers on a stem, was moderately successful. I composed the type in Microsoft Word, relying on the ruler both in the program and in my hand. Measuring the distance of each cut out and trying to match it on the computer screen proved particularly challenging. As you can see in the images above I missed the mark a few times. But overall I am happy with the result and anxious to try more, to see how I can turn this into a final image with the tape or the paper, or both.

Cut and Paste, Scissors and Glue. Or Tape.

How does one simulate a simulation? Copy, cut and paste. These phrases are so embedded in the lingo of word-processing computer programs that it can be difficult to decontextualize them. Or recontextualize them, depending on your perspective. This experiment begins with a paragraph, about 4″ of justified text, Times New Roman 12pt in Microsoft Word. The ramblings about cut and paste are almost of no consequence. To print, to cut, to paste, and to discover: that is my intended process. I’ll try to bring back the physical and kinetic implications of the tools I have come to rely on through the convenience of a word processor.

The source material:

Copy and Paste. Invaluable tools of the modern writer. The modern writer and user of basic, easily accessible, user-friendly software. Only a simulation of a kinetic act. To cut and to paste. To disassemble and reassemble. Is there more of a story there? What can we find when looking at the cut and paste. Icons mark the actions. Small scissors are ready to chop the words to bits. To allow them to be scrambled in the nether land behind the screen. Lost in the black box. The paste offer a clipboard and a sheet of paper. Organized, logical, returning the piece to normal. But you, the modern writer and user of the program, are limited. Your words are removed and reappear like magic, but the page remains intact. The white screen, the simulation of the blank page that has daunted humanity for decades, does not fall prey to the ravenous edge of the scissors. This text, however, will. Something will emerge, something beyond the story I am telling you now. The computer, printer, paper, scissors, glue and tape will all play their part in the composition. Even the surface where the flitting pieces of paper will fall in line. To copy, cut and paste. Few phrases conjure such distinct images of digital work processes, yet such the words are anything but reliant on the screen. In contrast, they bring us to the physical. They enter my life through tools. They remind me that I am human and the computer, right in front of me, is merely simulating the tasks I can do with my own hands. So now we print. I let the words erupt.

Here you are going to find the most “blog” like aspect of this project. Scroll through to read my epiphanies, frustrations, and amusements as I move forward. To read more structured philosophical ramblings about the themes and production of each image, click over to The Results.