“Born Digital – New Materialities”.

Paul Thompson

This paper presents the findings of new research undertaken amongst contemporary printmaking practitioners to determine markers of transition between traditional and new forms of printmaking, framed by conception of “Born Digital – New Materialities” - where a print object is conceived and/or created wholly in digital form (The-Library-of-Congress, 2010) whereby artists, utilising digital technologies, demand new conceptions, forms and aesthetics – “towards a new printmaking materiality”. The research was undertaken through social network platforms to coordinate the collation and curation of a digitally mediated international exchange survey of contemporary “print” developed through digital mediation for digital exhibition, publication and editioning. The research examines notions of “new materiality”, set against new concepts of electronic consumption for the second generation of printmaking formed by “ a multiply produced object made with a new type of template” [Kushner 2009] or printmaking 2.0, driven by burgeoning demand[s] for electronic distribution of digitally mediated prints.

Introduction

The ‘Born Digital – New materialities’ print portfolio is the result of an open call ‘exchange’ survey, examining the notion of ‘printmaking 2.0’. It is part of research examining the physical and temporal parameters of post-studio print making practice through the exploration and application of digital processes in making and cultural shifts in digital participation, being undertaken by the curator/researcher at Grays School of Art – Robert Gordon University.

The research is founded on questions of how the transferred image is being redefined by developments in both the technical practice of digital process and the shifts resulting from mass digital participation. With resulting questions concerning the very nature of digital printmaking in these terms and in respect to the physical & temporal boundaries of the digital print itself. Thus questions are raised concerning the materiality of the artistic statement and of authenticity, authority and ownership that arise within digitally mediated printmaking. When associated with rapid developments in mobile devices, flat screen and projection technologies (electronic surfaces) and networked spaces the collector is afforded new opportunities to amass, view and share digitally mediated prints in new ways.

These technological and cultural developments raise questions of both, the physical and temporal nature of the digitally mediated print, the cultural perspective of the recipient and hence the role of the printmaker in post-material digitised space. Thus forming the rationale for the research and providing the foundation for this study, which is contextualised against the concepts that; when an object is created in digital form, we describe it as being ‘born digital’ ¹⁶, whilst, as artists, we are increasingly utilising technologies which demand new conceptions, forms and aesthetics – ‘new materiality’.

Questions are raised therefore concerning what implications arise for the instigation, production, editioning, collection and ownership of ‘print’ in an increasingly digital age and dematerialised society?

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Introduction