Edamame, quadricolore

Test images for a larger work...

Flag idea

I recently printed one of my fruit box images onto fabric, thinking of doing a series of flags. In my final crit, my classmates discouraged this idea, and after some reflection I understand why. Bringing in the 'flag' idea, which I thought might help with my reference to globalisation/borders, is too topical-bandwagon and detracts from the real focus of my project.

Walter Benjamin for my essay

Try to drag your brain through this:

Selected excerpts from 'The Work of Art in the Age ofMechanical Reproduction' by Walter Benjamin

In the case of the art object, a most sensitive nucleus - namely, its authenticity - is interfered with whereas no natural object is vulnerable on that score. The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced. Since the historical testimony rests on the authenticity, the former, too, is jeopardized by reproduction when substantive duration ceases to matter. And what is really jeopardized when the historical testimony is affected is the authority of the object.
One might subsume the eliminated element in the term 'aura' and go on to say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. This is a symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm ofart. One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches th.e reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own partIcular sItuatIon, It reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering oftradition which is the obverse ofthe contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind. Both processes are intimately connected with the contemporary mass movements. Their most powerful agent is the film. Its socIal SIgnIficance, particularly in its most positive form, is inconceivable without its destructive, cathartic aspect, that is, the liquidation of the traditional value of the cultural heritage.
Originally the contextual integration of art in tradition found its expression in the cult. We know that the earliest art works originated in the service of a ritual - first the magical, then the religious kind. It is significant that the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated from its ritual function. In other words, the unique value of the 'authentic' work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty. The secular cult of beauty, developed during the Renaissance and prevailing for three centuries, clearly showed that ritualistic basis in its decline and the first deep crisis which befell it. With the advent of the first truly revolutionary means of reproduction, photography, simultaneously with the rise of socialism, art sensed the approaching crisis which has become evident a century later. At the time, art reacted with the doctrine ofl'art pour l'art, that is, with a theology ofart. This gave rise to what might be called a negative theology in the form of the idea of 'pure' art, which not only denied any social function of art but also any categorizing by subject matter. (In poetry, Mallarme was the first to take this position.)
...  An analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction must do justice to these
relationships, for they lead us to an all-important insight: for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work ofart reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the 'authentic' print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice - politics. 

I like Walter Benjamin, but I think he writes his sentences in the most backwards and roundabout ways possible. I have attempted to rephrase the above into simple english I can understand:

Unlike natural objects, the authenticity of art objects is sensitive, and vulnerable to human interference. The ’authenticity’ of an object refers to its entire lifespan, and how it pays testimony to its own history. The ability to reproduce art objects means that the duration of its history no longer matters. Its authenticity is jeopardised, which affects the object’s authority.
Mechanical reproduction diminishes the ‘aura’ of a work of art. This is a symptom of processes outside of art. The technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from its traditional field. By making many reproductions, a unique existence is substituted by copies. When a copy is encountered, the reproduced object is reactivated. These two processes (ie. making reproductions, and encountering them?) are intrinsically connected with contemporary mass movements. They cause tradition to shatter, coinciding with the ‘contemporary crisis’ and renewal of mankind. The most powerful example of these processes is film. Film has positive social significance, but it is also destructive, as it liquidates the traditional value of cultural heritage.
Artworks originated from a ritual context - first magical, then religious. An artwork and its aura are based on, and never entirely separated from, its original ritual function. Although this basis is remotely evident in the cult of beauty, it declined during the Renaissance. Photography was the first truly revolutionary means of reproduction, which occurred simultaneously with the rise of socialism. Art sensed the approaching crisis, and reacted with French art theology. This idea of ‘pure’ art could be considered negative, as it denied any social function of art.
In the age of mechanical reproduction, analysing art must do justice to these relationships. They show that, for the first time in history, mechanical reproduction emancipates artworks from their dependence on ritual. Works of art become increasingly designed to be reproduced. For example, one can make any number of prints from a photographic negative, and there is no one ‘authentic’ print. But when ‘authenticity’ no longer applies to artistic production, the function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it becomes political. 

I want to reference his ideas about the effect of mechanical reproduction in my essay, but I'm already well over my word count... I also want to connect his comments about the 'aura' to Nate Larson's works which capture the electric field - or 'aura' - around an object (specifically fruit and vegetables in his 'Ingestion' series)

Another option

These would be printed on vinyl stickers like the boxes and cut out around the edges. The idea is to depict food packaging - no actual food, but just the containers it comes in - colour coded based on the material, as per the airport customs security scanners. This would bring in ideas of materiality, food waste, consumerism... Also, they wouldn't need to be x-rayed as the vinyl stickers themselves bring in the element of transparency. The images would be photographs of food waste found at elam and at my home. Just another option...

White conveyor belt - options

A few different test layouts using the vinyl stickers I printed my box images onto:

1: separated

Here you can also see the new legs I made for the conveyor belt! The other ones were different heights so the surface was on an angle.

2: overlapping
Because the stickers are transparent, and I have more than enough to cover the full surface, there is also the option of having them overlap slightly...

or arranged with slight tilts:

Playing with colours...

I'm very systematic with my choices, as you can tell from my video mock-ups... so here's some WIP screenshots of me 'thinking through' colours and layouts for some potential extra screen prints.

Pulling colours from reference images

Tidied up

Beginning to morph them together to work out the average...

All overlapping

Final swatch: green for spring, brown for autumn, orange for summer and blue for winter.

Double checking against the original images

Applied to my images:

Documentation: A catch up post / series of unfortunate events (October)

It's been a while since I posted any documentation. This is not because I haven't been doing work - quite the opposite. I've been working so much I haven't had time to document anything properly.

It has been an absolute nightmare few weeks. Bear with me here. There is a happy ending, I promise.

However, the number of times I have gone home in tears is actually embarrassing. So is the number of days when I spent more than 12 hours working solidly at elam.
Now that all the stress is behind me, though, I think it was worth it...

As mentioned in my last post (which seems nightmarish enough, but it just gets worse from there, so much worse…) when I removed the roller bar, the rubber belt got slack and rubbed against the bolts at the back.

The back of the conveyor, roller bar visible

I figured I'd just sort this issue out later, and just get started straightaway, as I anticipated it was going to take ages so I was in a hurry to get printing. And then, when I took off the vinyl test layer, to my horror, it left residue all over the rubber, and I spent a full day scrubbing it off.

Then I began printing directly onto the rubber itself. It worked okay, would still scratch off when rubbed with a fingernail, so I did a few test patches with different gac / gel mediums mixed with the ink to improve adhesion. It seemed to work better with just the ink, and no additives.

To protect the prints from getting damaged during transit / handling / operation, I wanted to glaze them with some sort of clear plastic coat. I did a few test patches on the blank rubber and the one that worked best was a mixture of Gac 200 and some self levelling clear gel.

However, when I painted this over the prints, they dissolved. I had to scrub off the prints on the first conveyor belt and start over. Again.
So very depressing.

The next week, Ellen and I sussed out a way to seal the prints without this disintegration happening: using spray varnish and waiting for it to dry before applying the medium mixture. This became a very time consuming process as the varnish needed 24 hours to dry, and I could print the conveyors only 1/3rd at a time, with prepping and printing the screens took at least a day, plus drying time of the prints and the medium, so it took over a week to do the first two… It felt worth it, as I was so happy with the depth created by the wonderful sturdy layer of plastic-y varnish.

(The bits of masking tape at the bottom are markers)

Until it leaned against a chair leg overnight and stuck, ripping up a chunk of the medium as well as the print underneath. And then, horror of horrors, the same thing happened with some glad wrap that had been on the ground and got stuck to it, ripping off a whole section of the glaze/print as I carefully peeled it off. And then, once a finished/glazed conveyor had had a full week to dry, I put the roller bar back in, left it overnight, and realised that this was never going to work.
How silly to think I could apply a layer that was both a) adhesive enough to stick to the rubber, and b) not adhesive enough to stick to anything else. Um. Can't really have both.

a distinct indented line was left wherever the roller stopped...

 

Even without the roller, the belt would make contact with the bolts on the other side, which would cause same problem elsewhere.

Basically, I was not even back to square one, I was ten steps behind where I started.
Getting the varnish off all the prints so far took many days of hard labour, several metres of brillo pads, some paint stripper and a bottle of turps. Nothing could be more demoralising than having to put in this much effort to scrub off your art just to start over again. My blood, sweat and tears went into this artwork. Literally.

removal in progress - bottom left corner.

So, two weeks of intensely hard work wasted; physically and emotionally exhausted; and after having massacred my brain cells from the fumes (I wore a proper respirator mask while using paint stripper, but I'm still paranoid about those toxic fumes) - I started again.

Pete, the metal workshop technician, said I should cover up the roller with soft tape, but I decided to remove the roller altogether, and print onto the rubber using no other media. This was a reluctant defeat. I'd liked the conceptual connections, with the spray varnish linking to the 'dip spray' treatment of imported produce, the gel coat relating to petroleum based wax some fruits are coated with in order to 'maintain freshness' etc. Instead, the list of materials would now read, simply, 'ink on conveyor.''
This way doesn't have quite the same depth but is much more simple, and means it will be easy to re-do any prints should they get damaged in transit from one building to another, etc - rather than having to strip the glaze off and patch it up again, which I’d realised would never work. Sure, without the roller the edges will rub against the bolts at the back, but without the glaze, this damage won’t be evident, as long as the prints themselves are well clear of the edges.

So I got printing... Again.

more masking tape markers

And third time's the charm.

Each conveyor contains about 13 prints, over around 7 screens. Many of the prints needed to be cleaned off straightaway and done two or three times because of blemishes or streaks.
Each screen takes at least a couple of hours prep time - and things occasionally go wrong while water blasting, right at the end, and the process needs to start over.
Considering these hours that went into prepping the screens, it felt like a waste to clean them off again straight away. So I tripled my workload by doing some prints on paper  - white on black, and coloured on white - before cleaning the screens for the next rotation of prints.

Prints on paper

All up it was an extraordinarily long process, but it became enjoyable when it was working (finally!) and I was in the swing of it. I finally finished last Friday and didn't know what to do with myself!!! Full images of the paper prints (above) are to come. I'm still keen to do some different colour combinations, although this would require re-doing the screens all over again.

Of course, with our essay drafts due a while ago, I've been working on my essay at the same time as all of the above. The silver lining of the whole horrendous process I've just described is that it inspired me to come up with the analogy between screen printing and agriculture. Now I know full well how a farmer would feel over a failed crop, and why they would turn to resorts like pesticides, chemical fertilisers etc. if the situation called for it. I would usually never use toxic chemicals like turps and paint stripper, but desperate times do indeed call for desperate measures!

And I have also been busy in the metal workshop, making...
-legs for the white conveyor belt;
-new brackets for the black ones, which I redesigned after my visiting artist crit because I thought other method was kind of clunky (and, to continue my streak of bad luck, I had to go back to the steel shop because someone stole the metal i’d bought a few weeks earlier!!)
-brackets for the sensors

hard at work

And now that the black ones are done, I've been thinking hard about what to print on the white conveyor belt. Screen printing won't be possible on these due to the textured surface and the roller bars underneath which are not removable, but the vinyl stickers I have printed seem to work fine. But do I really want to print more fruit, or found fruit/veg boxes, onto this? I've got a few other ideas... the only issue now is TIME. And not enough of it. One month to go!!

Installation - test animation

Another animation to test the possible effects of different printing layout options. 

George, PhD printmaking student, suggested that rather than a separated / itemised layout, I instead print the forms larger and overlapping. I put this together quickly yesterday morning to help me visualise his suggestion, to be able to compare both options and decide what to print.

Sorry, George, but I don't think I'll take your advice. My supervisor and I both prefer the first option.

Fruit and Veg X-rays, round 2

I went back to Mercy Radiology again a couple of weeks ago. They loved the bags that I gave them as a thank you for last time, and they are currently getting one of my prints framed for their waiting room. Yay! So I was pretty lucky in that they were more than happy for me to come back again.

This time I brought another massive basket of fruits and vegetables. The ones I've been using so far are getting a bit 'tired' and I felt that it was important to expand my image vocabulary in time for the final installation. We had such a blast, and this time I got to learn a bit more about how the machine works, how they fine-tune the settings, the effects and levels of radiation involved... It was really interesting. And I'm stoked with the images that I came away with...

Tests for scrolling images

These are the original ideas for what to print on the conveyor belts, presented in an animated mock-up:

Printmaking nightmares

Following on from my troubleshooting with printing on adhesive surfaces...

I had a bright idea for printing on the conveyor belts. I got some black vinyl to cover them up with. That way, I could print my images on the vinyl, and if anything went wrong (as things often do with screen printing) I could easily peel off the vinyl and do it again.

Sounds easy.

It wasn't.

Two nightmarish weeks of experimentation ensued, and they were definitely not worth the trouble.

Nope, nope, and nope.

Above: CCG inks and Gac 200. This worked OK, it still rubbed off when scratched with enough pressure.

Using Live to Print plant based inks and Gac 200 in an attempt to make them more adhesive to the shiny surface... No such luck. Even when fully dry it did not stick to the surface at all and flaked off with the lightest touch.

50/50 gac to ink ratio, and still it rubbed off with the brush of a finger.

I had the best of intentions to use Live to Print inks, because they are so nice and matte in contrast with the shiny vinyl surface. I even emailed Matthew Lewis, the maker and supplier of these eco-friendly inks, to ask if he had any ideas for how I could make this work. Basically, his reply was that it's never going to work. The Live to Print inks are made for paper. For printing on plastic, you need another type of ink entirely, and no matter how much medium you add plant-based inks won't ever cut the mustard. In the meantime I'd been busily googling solutions, and this website reconfirmed that it was just never going to happen.

Then, deciding that the 'temporary' plastic surface wasn't worth the trouble, I removed the vinyl. Or, I tried to. It resisted coming off, and when it did, it came off in small strips and left a film of extraordinary sticky adhesive. It took six hours of peeling, scrubbing and half a bottle of rubbing alcohol before the surface was back to its original state.

I'm just so glad I used this as an experiment and didn't have to go through the same process with the other four belts, too.

Anyway, now I'm trying to work out a way of removing the roller from the back of the conveyor, because without that bar of steel pressing against the print surface, I won't need to worry quite so much about the durability of the ink. It's just a matter of whether it will still rotate without this tightness. The question then is what can be done about the metal brackets I've made to prop out the base from the wall - without the roller bar, the belt is slack, and rubs against these.

The adventure continues.

An idea for presentation of the petri dish works

The petri dishes I've been using each have a base and a lid. I realised recently that the lid isn't necessary, and that removing it also gets rid of a lot of edges, ridges, and overlapping plastic that disrupts the vision of the viewer. With the lids on, the dishes could be stacked easily. Without them, the bases can be lodged together - I just might need to find a way of incorporating some glue to make sure they stay. 

On the right, the original work (excuse the tape); on the left is a version without the lids, so the prints are more clear.

If they're not stacked up (everyone in my crit with Lisa agreed that the 'stacking' makes the viewing experience difficult - they would be best at eye level and the viewer needs to be able to move around them to see all the angles) and I tacked some to the wall in the studio to see what they might look like...

Again, ignoring the tape, I'm really happy about this effect.
It's like the conveyor belts - taking something that's usually flat, on the level of a bench or a table, and making it a wall mounted work. It's kind of like Simon Denny turning things upside down.

Notes from crit with Lisa Reihana:

The feedback I got for this installation was OVERWHELMINGLY positive.
I wanted to use the crit to see if I could get the go-ahead to print my x-ray images on the conveyor belt. They agreed that the 'readymade' isn't my thing, and while the conveyor's presence and movement is effective on its own, within my practice it is definitely more of a blank canvas. Nonetheless it was great to have a chance to show it on its own before starting to print on it.
The petri dishes were a point of much discussion - again, a lot of great feedback, although the OHP definitely isn't necessary in such a light space and conceptually overcomplicates it. Nikau commented that the use of the petri dishes doesn't do justice to the process and effect of printing transparent cross-sections and displaying them in 3D space - i.e. they could be presented in some way that gives them more impact.
The crit opened up a lot of discussion about food and food systems and the myriad topics I'm tackling in this project. I'm thrilled that as soon as the ball gets rolling everybody gets enthusiastic about these ideas and everybody has something to say. Lisa's advice that stuck with me the most was to stop worrying about making the ideas more ambiguous, when I voiced my concern that it might all be 'too obvious.' She said the complete opposite - that when you're dealing with ideas that are important and that you want to be accessible to a public audience, you can make the ideas obvious, and that's okay. Another really comforting thing she said to me was that I don't need to stress about the overwhelming sensation that there's not enough time and there are a thousand other artworks you want to make. We're all acutely aware of our deadline at the end of this year, but as she pointed out, that's not the end of our art practice - we've got the rest of our lives to realise all the other ideas.
Thanks a million Lisa.

Tests - installation for visiting critique

I spent a long time with the images I'd printed at V3, trying different arrangements with the vinyl sheets. Below are images of different compositions.