Post Digital Visual Experiments – Print Degradation

I thought because I’d been thinking and researching about the Post digital a lot already for my position brief over Christmas I’d just start with some visual experiments. I love the idea of how on-screen images are created from code and can be converted down many different routes. I previously explored the transferability of code in my Sapere Aude typography project. I wondered how this thinking could be adapted to an image making process.

The brief asks “how can a post digital approach be used to augment, enhance or otherwise transform: 1) writing, typography and/or scripts, or 2) Photography, imaging, and or signals.”

As a starting point I thought about this old print that I got at a market. Below is a scan…

The lithograph printing method is reminiscent of pixelation to me. There is this idea of heritage with print and what computers have done to these techniques. It was an interesting visual starting point.

In this experiment series I look at images. To me the digital printer is a bridge between the analogue and the digital. It works both ways from digital to physical (through sending something to print off the computer) and physical to digital (through scanning something). Printing is obviously extremely important to the practice of graphic design and is steeped in the physical process, however image reproduction to me at least is nowadays more associated with the digital.

I wanted to see how I could break the printing process by exploring the digital analogue balance behind it. This is an idea somewhat inspired by the conceptual artist Daniel Eatock.

“A complete set of Pantone marker pens standing on their base with their nibs facing upright. Single sheets of A1 paper carefully placed to rest on the bed of pen nibs. Each left for twice the duration of the previous print, giving the gradually drying pens more time to mark the paper. For each print the pens where rearranged in a random composition.”

https://eatock.com/about/daniel-eatock/2/’

It made me think about exploiting breaking points and the limitations of the physical to start approaching my digital analogue balances. This infers the visual outcome. Through experimentation I formulated my image degradation method.By photocopying an image and then photocopying that photocopy the image will degrade just a little bit. If you do this enough times your image completely breaks. (please note the photos are rotated incorrectly in the experiment below)

I scanned all these experiments in and thought the frame like nature of the series would convert well into an animation. Using the animation software within photoshop I played around with the different times between frames to create a smooth transition which I feel helps extenuate the extent of the degradation. It’s easier to view the communication without the physical limitation of going through 100 sheets of A3 individually, a thinking point within itself.

I flipped the video so the image was leaving the page off the right hand side more in line with how we read text in English, I thought perhaps it would extenuate the idea of degradation or something leaving.

I think its interesting that degradation is usually associated with physicality. It’s something we don’t naturally pair with the digital. It’s introducing humanity onto onscreen image – imperfections are human. The digital input within this experiment enhances and accelerates the visual degradation due to how the printer works. When scanned and converted, the image file picks up the visual flaws. The process of scanning and photocopying then emphasises the analogue. The lines of the print are picked up and from what I understand invoke the blackness seen towards the end of the process. The physical image has a complexity that can’t quite be interpreted by the technology. I wonder what effect it would have if I used a different type of imagery. How would a grainy film photograph or a scanned 3D object, or thick impasto painting translate in this process. Through using digital means the physicality of the analogue becomes very important to the process. It’s a very interesting relationship. Marcus got us thinking about Classical art with “The Next Rembrandt” (https://www.nextrembrandt.com/) a AI that uses an algorithm based on Rembrandt paintings to create a new painting. I’ve always loved art history so it was particularly fascinating to the see the post-digital embodied in this way. It got me thinking about how to show and celebrate degradation (or more specifically death) is reminiscent of the concept of Vanitas. “A vanitas is a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, often contrasting symbols of wealth and symbols of ephemerality and death.”

When looking at the post digital I also thought about Glitch art. To me it celebrates and beautifies the clunkiness and error of early digital software. This method is almost like creating an analogue glitch with the corruption of image akin to what might be seen on a computer screen.

I then tried this technique on a different printer to see if it would dictate a visually different outcome. The original experiment reacted so sporadically. The whole thing slid off the page and pixelated black smears were drawn in some instances right across the image. I wanted to know if this would be the case on another printer.
Here is another printer, this one near the coffee machine:

It has a different quality, it goes darker much quicker. Alongside these experiments I worked with the videos, editing them to see how it affected the communication.

I felt the shape of the line was interesting so decided to emphasis this irregular curving. I started thinking about how degradation could be considered a cycle a representation of planned obsolescence. This idea of using this visual to create a narrative inspired me to play around with the idea of making the foreground static whilst having the whirring digital sky darken in the background. It was interesting to me that the sky becomes almost stormy through the degradation. I often think how the linearity of rain makes the otherwise natural landscape almost digitally cut up. When you look out the window at a rainy day, everything seems fuzzy, it’s a blur – a pixelated abstraction.

This experiment would need refining if I were to pursue this idea as an outcome. It stuck out to me that the form of the cloud remained consistent due to the negative space a simpler line making it up.

To have a greater understanding going further I wanted to understand why these visual outcomes occurred. I watched some simple videos to think how I could manipulate the printer further and create different visual outcome. It becomes a fun creative exercise finding so many uses for one piece of technology.

Marcus suggested extending the experiments by utilising colour or having a further way to engineer the degradation. Perhaps something like a passage of text that only becomes visible when it is degraded in a certain way. What I’m establishing is a process, a condition.