Nineteen eighty-four series

So here is the final selection from my Nineteen eighty-four series of 5 colour lithographs along with one larger solo example.

Start the Presses!

After a three year hiatus from lithography I finally got back to it this week. To start, a choose this five colour non-registered varied edition based on an appropriated Orwell nineteen eighty-four book I found in the library.

(Sorry for the low resolution, I used my cell phone to take these pics)

Ideas!

Here are a couple of shots of my Idea Cards. Printed on the Letter press, they allow me to log and archive my ideas for future projects. This way I can map my thought process and almost turn the idea of ideas into a game. When I need a project for a particular reason I just go to my wall and pick something to do.

For Sol Lewitt

This piece was done for the "exchange with Sol Lewitt" show that was taking place at the MASS MoCA and and at Cabinet in NYC. But, due to a postal error my pice sat in limbo for three weeks and ended up not being delivered.

Summer Work.

There is a little bit of everything here, including, print, drawing, digital and photography. This is only a small portion of the things I created this summer, but wall space was limited. 

Found Plate Improvisations. (Intaglio/Drawing)

Four separate projects

Little Organic Drawings

Macroblock drawing, Macroblock assemblage, Macroblock iterations.

Some work from last semester.

So, I haven't posted in quite some time and I have done a terrible job of documenting my recent work, but here is one ongoing project.

This project revolves around teaching myself to engrave in copper. Since this technique is hundreds of years old and been, more or less, replaced by etching no one can teach it to me at school. So, this project is me teaching it to myself.

With this project I print after each line I make and keep the off prints for drawing on or doodling. I write my notes directly on the prints and instead of an edition I have a type of narrative book that documents the process. It is definitely not very masterful but is fun none-the-less.

Digital DreamScapes (Not the official Title of the series)

These prints may end up not going anywhere as I do not like to work aesthetically any more. There are some conceptual puzzles I am working with in these, but they are, as of yet, unresolved. When and if they ever do, I will officially welcome these prints into my official practice. but for now, they are just fun images to make and shoot!

Prix Albert-Dumouchel Vernisage

So my first post in months shows me with my son, sister, partner at the vernissage for the Prix Albert-Dumouchel, a print competition here in Quebec. The show itself had a few interesting pieces and but on the whole was not overly impressive.

The winning Entry was pretty interesting as it dealt with themes that I am interested in as well - notably language, identity and relations. Though if I had to vote on a winning piece I might very well have chosen the same one, I still find it strange that one of the three judges was a the print director at UQAM and the two winners were from there. Seems to me to lack a certain ethic and most likely a conflict of interest but on the whole I do not care much for competitions. I need them for the CV but these are rarely a proof of superiority, just taste. Winning would not have proven me better and losing does not prove me worse.

Still a fun time was had and I was proud to have introduced my Son Lukas to his first vernisage. Hopefully, he will get many opportunities to accompany me in the future.

Untitled Landscape #2

Here is my last offset litho of my undergrad degree. 

For this one I tried to work with subdued colors and include (a barely noticeable) white layer on tan/grey paper. Overall I like the quality of the print even though it does not stand out like the previous colored ones. The white is subtle but it does make a difference. 

At least I finally learned how to print clean with the plates. On the last official day of my undergrad degree i finally realized what I was doing wrong on the press.

I have yet to name this piece so for now we will call it "Untitled Landscape #2".

Conspiring

Here is one (at a slightly higher pixel resolution) of brutus and a gang of senators conspiring to kill Julius Caesar.

Watching TV Digitaly!

My latest attempt at digital printmaking has me revisiting the Pixelography project but with a newly programed version. 

After realizing the limitations with Max/msp I have recreated the pixel capture program in Java and have included a few new algorithms for how the pixels capture and draw the images. 

As well, instead of feeding the video directly into the program, this time around, I am watching the films through a video camera pointed at the tv. Basically, I have created a "subjective" viewer that just happens to be a digital device. And this particular viewer was watching the death of Julius Ceasar from the HBO tv show Rome. 

I have included here two versions of the capture, one with the same linear algorithm as my last Full Metal Jacket series, and one with my new k*counter%arrayLength algorithm. Though both very simple the perceived image speaks volumes about the role the perceiver has in creating the object viewed.

Ashenvale Bridge

Here are some shots of my newest Video Game landscape done on the the Vandercook press with polymer plate. 

Though I had some major problems exposing the plates I am fairly happy with the resulting print.

Narratives - Art Matters 2009

Here are a few photographs from the Narratives show at Art Mur in which I showed my digital print series on Full Metal Jacket. 

Start the Presses

After a long break from the printing presses, I have started to work with my line screen experiments again. To start me off I am working small and with one or two colors and will hopefully work towards more complex images as the semester advances. 

This test was done using a polymer plate and printed on a Vandercook Proofing press. Though, the tests started out really well, after a few prints it started filling in and I could not get it back. Additionally, I kept getting ink on the back of the printed pages and did not notice it until I got home with the prints. I will expose another plate with a modified matrix and try again this week.

Lasagna show @ Arprim

Some pics from the Lasagna show opening today at Arprim. The show turned out pretty well and I was happy with my prints. The invitation I made for it was really badly printed and someone (I don't know who,) repositioned my type. But, since they where printed so late it didn't make a difference and hopefully almost no one will see them. 

Pixel lapse photography

Here is a test from my latest programing/print project. Basically, It does what a digital camera does only slower. It exposes the process of registering one pixel at a time as it takes the photo. Usually the process is so fast that it looks instant but in reality numbers always register in sequence. 

I still have quite a bit of work to do on this as right now my computer has trouble doing this at speed at high resolutions. So, I need to optimize the program and see where I can squeeze a little more performance out. I also need to make an interface and iron out some bugs. It shouldn't be long now as the prototype works quite well.

As you can see things that don't move register clearly whereas things that do move have their movement registered as the pixels draw. 

Wittgenstein, Language, and Simulacrum

These are the next steps in my simulacrum project listed below. In this print work, I used programming to translate some Wittgenstein quotes from Tractatus, into binary pixels in CMYK. I guess this can almost be seen as a combination of much of my previous work. to me this still seems in-progress. It is not resolved and needs to continue or be discarded.