Printmaking became a way of discovery for me a long time ago.

I was first exposed to printmaking when referred to an artist by the name of Max Hein. This was at The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Hein was a graduate student in the design department, and had a studio on the top floor of the art department building. I had this radical and life-changing idea of showing the world what the little seen universe of blood cells and stained pathology tissue would look like if it were created large and life size. And I was interested in the Hein’s work, as I had been looking for a way to create large prints of images seen through a microscope; having just migrated from a career in Medical Technology.

A photo from the personal archive of Jack Duganne (Courtesy of Jack Duganne)

Hein was working in a print media called photo-silkscreen, which I found fascinating! He would take photographs and blow them up very large onto clear sheets of plastic film, and then transfer the images onto a silk-screen using a photo-stenciling process. Hein would then place the silkscreen on top of a large piece of paper and then spread a mixture of beautifully colored ink onto the silk-screen. Using a stiff rubber blade mounted in a wooden handle, Hein would scrape the colored ink through the screen onto the paper; leaving an impression on the paper and of the image he had transferred earlier from the clear film. He created geometric patterns on some screens, with multiple densities of photographs on other screens; layering them all in interesting combinations.

Upon witnessing all this, I was amazed. I could see that every step of the process presented more and more possibility.

Hein was able to control the image in the camera when he photographed it originally. He was able to control the image in the enlarger when he enlarged or reduced it, and was able to manipulate the image in the developing tray while he brought it to life in the chemicals. Hein also found that he was later able to play with multiple sheets of film together when he exposed them to the sensitized photo-stencil on the silkscreen, and after making the screens he had many possible combinations of imagery with which to construct the final print—creating geometric patterns on some screens with photographs on other screens; layering them all in interesting combinations. The further use of color applied in different applications and layers also increased the range of variation and information.

A photo from the personal archive of Jack Duganne (Courtesy of Jack Duganne)

The whole process was vibrant and pregnant with possibility, and I was instantly hooked. My imagery didn’t matter as much as the process any more. The imagery was just a path into the possibilities that might occur when combined with other images and colors.

During this same time, another important aspect of my life path changed. I had been studying pre-med, and throughout my formal medical education had always been drawn to the art of my wife, who was a painter.

I was always mesmerized by her creations, which seemed to evolve late at night in quiet studios under the house. And now I understood what went on, when I started playing with concept and color and form and, most of all, process! Process, as I was discovering, was the vehicle carrying me on the journey into my fascination with art making. The processes of photography, screen-printing, color and image manipulation were mesmerizing; drawing me into a world where anything is possible!

The years following that re-birth were filled with discovery and learning. I moved from a house into a studio and started teaching photo-silkscreen printing. I worked on my own art using techniques found in primitive photography technique books and journals, and I combined processes of silkscreen and non-silver photo print technologies. To this, I studied with masters of obscure printing techniques and started to develop my own style and look. I began to sell my work to galleries, my writings to publishers, and to have a following of serious collectors.

I had developed printing techniques that involved the use of very large and long silkscreens and tables combined with split-fountain printing techniques that would allow me to print multiple colors with one pass of the squeegee (a stiff rubber blade mounted in a wooden handle). This process of multiple passes created a range of colors unavailable with any other technique. And using torn paper stencils I was able to create two, three, and four panel prints, which when placed together in a line, would make one single image across the pages.

Each day I woke with new ideas of new combinations of color and stencil that would create entirely new images. The process was intoxicating!

Growing in my work and developing my own techniques and styles, I moved to also creating prints for other artists using color separation and printmaking techniques learned from other master-printmakers combined with my own. One printmaker in particular, Lorry Arellanes, from San Francisco, had developed a color separation technique that broke each color separation down into multiple values and then printed each value with a different dilution of the process color it represented. This made possible an almost perfect reproduction of an image without using any half-tone screen or mechanical tone creation device – virtual continuous-tone printing!

I was in love, because now I could do with silkscreen with what had before only been possible with stone lithography and collotype (the oldest continuous-tone form of printing). Using this newfound technology, I set myself up as a Master Printer, working for other artists in a way never before realized.

I was now going in a new and different direction. This new direction, however, proved to be difficult. I was creating beautiful work for other artists; spending all of my time doing it. I was working with a process that was extremely labor and materials intensive, not to mention the toxic element of the inks, cleansers and wash-up solvents. My methods needed to be simplified! So, I began to look for ways to make the whole process more efficient. I began to look to computers and computer technology to help me.

One day I discovered a process being used by the design department at UCLA. They had set up a studio in Westwood, California, for a machine from Japan called a Fuji printer. It was a combination of a large scanner and a drum printer. The drum was very large and it printed with four colors that were sprayed from nozzles, which moved across the drum while the drum was spinning. When the drum stopped, the image that had been scanned earlier, was now printed on a piece of paper that had been adhered to the spinning drum. I was amazed again! Only this time, I was not very impressed with the final product. It was very dull, drab, color-less, and the image was composed of many large dots. I found that unacceptable. However as I was leaving the studio that day, I was shown a different image that was beautiful. It appeared to be a color photograph of a woman in a wedding dress holding a bouquet of multi-colored flowers. This print was something different. It was a print made on an IRIS printer – another type of inkjet printer similar to the large drum printer I had just seen. And now, I was truly impressed!

A photo from the personal archive of Jack Duganne (Courtesy of Jack Duganne)

I was again directed to another source–to a man named Steve Boulter, who sold the IRIS printers. He was working on a project with a color and computer scientist by the name of David Coons. Together they were developing a series of prints on the IRIS for an artist by the name of Graham Nash.

Nash is a well-known musician who is also noted for a very large, private collection of modern and vintage photography. In addition, he is an accomplished and published photographer himself. Using the IRIS, Coons and Boulter were helping Graham to create a body of his black and white photographs on heavy Arches watercolor paper. David had written an algorithm that printed a full tone black and white print from the four process colors printed by the IRIS printer. It was a brilliant idea, and the images printed from the IRIS were beautiful and impressive.

I was hooked! I had to see more, learn more and work with this new machine and technology.

In the months that followed, Coons, who worked for Disney at the time, became more and more involved with a major project at Disney. He didn’t have the time to print the traveling show that was being created for Graham, but I was able to learn enough of the technology to fill in on the printing. I also had a deep knowledge of fine art printing, and so I just started treating the digital IRIS prints in the same way that I had been treating serigraphs (fine art silk-screen prints). A new journey was created. I now needed to know everything I could about this new way of creating prints, because I could see clearly that this was the future of fine art printing.

On this exciting journey another person of interest appeared on the scene, Mac Holbert, who had been the road manager and personal friend and confidant of Graham Nash. Holbert had decided to partner with Nash to start a small enterprise using the IRIS printer as a new business and venture. Holbert wanted to get off the road and settle down with his wife and new baby girl in a situation that would allow more time with his family and pursue something new. He agreed to hire me as a printmaker, and together we began the formation of a studio by the name of Nash Editions. Holbert was the head of the studio and developed ways of working and doing business that allowed it to thrive and grow. I was allowed to do as much research and development as was needed to make the printmaking side of the studio grow and expand.

Holbert had a deep knowledge of computer skills and understanding. He brought in graphics programs and Macintosh and Linux computer systems, which allowed for a greater and more developed exploration into this new world of computer-generated printmaking.

In the beginning days at Nash Editions, an artist for whom we had created a new body of work, raised the question about the name to call the process. This caught my attention, and I researched names for what I believed was to soon become a standard for printmaking. The process was too beautiful–the results too perfect–for it not to catch on with a bang! I came up with a word from the French language referring to the nozzle – which would have to be utilized in any digital printing machine – present or future. The word was “giclée”. And since its first use, it is a word that has now become ubiquitous in the lexicon of printmaking terminology.

As time went on, Nash Editions became more dedicated to the development of photographers and photography-based printmaking. After all, Nash was and is a photographer, and it was only natural that the studio pursues that direction.

A photo from the personal archive of Jack Duganne (Courtesy of Jack Duganne)

In due time, I left Nash Editions to form my own studio, which I named Duganne Ateliers. The rest of this story can be summed up as a wild and exciting ride, about an adventure and my preferences for those things that have become my trademarks of equipment, materials and process.

Through digital technologies and those that champion creativity, our world has been forever changed.

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With the permission of Jack Duganne, extended [edited] excerpts were taken from a recent essay by Duganne to create this article

Joe Nalven, Sandiego Times Online | Commentary – Before I can even utter the phrase digital aesthetics, I can sense objections such as ‘it is not an aesthetic, it is just a toolset, like paintbrushes and oil paints’ or ‘images made with a computer can never be art - at best it would be a computer aesthetic’ or even ‘we are now in a post-digital age.’ Such objections are useful because they lead into interesting discussions about art and aesthetics as appreciated by the thousands of cultures throughout human history and across the earth, and not just a narrowly defined view culled from but a few cultures or a view based on the monetary value attributed to objects of art.

Etymology and Avoiding a Preemptive Bias

Let us recall how our understanding of aesthetics was framed in the mid 18th century by lin Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. He narrowed the Greek term, αἰσθάνομαι (aisthanomai, meaning “I perceive, feel, sense”) to taste or judgments about what was perceived. The word, aesthetics, became intellectualized. Etymologically, one might argue that he should have used the word aesthetics to refer to the study of perception rather than that of beauty.(1)

This is reminiscent of the 15th century debate in Italy, where a liberal art was more noble and intellectual while the more mechanical arts (like sculpture) were ignoble, and had the connotation of being practiced by slaves. That’s what Da Vinci thought of sculptors like Michelangelo.

Yes, an European elitism proved up by the expansion of its colonial empire. The question is whether such notions have infiltrated the way in we think today about the arts and what is aesthetic? Perhaps, perhaps not.

But we can easily dispense of that historical bias by taking an approach that is more familiar to cultural anthropologists. Here, we find an openness to arts in all cultures, not just those limited to a few. This is a partial solution since we can then specify which canon of art we are speaking of. This solution does not address paradigm change within specific canons.

The starting point for an inquiry into art that is more anthropological in approach might be to focus on ‘the object maker in a specific cultural context.’ Different cultures employ different tools, different media, different themes about life, survival, relationships and so forth. Some cultures may emphasize the importance of visual presentation, others sound – a variety of emphases coming from our five senses, in effect, a multisensorial approach to different cultural approaches to artmaking and art appreciating. And, of course, individuals within any culture may bring a novel way of reinterpreting existing cultural norms.

A doorway into what a digital aesthetic is: A commentary on a digital aesthetic

Mel Strawn

What is distinct in digital capture and art processing includes things like transparency and imaginative juxtaposition (the sur-realist’s meme). It forces or invites a creative experience for artist and viewer alike just as the possible encounters of particle bits shape and emerge in sometimes beautiful evolutions in nature. Digital tools greatly increase this serendipitous creativity, not pre-planned or designed, but entered into with amazement and often joy, sometimes anguish.

Mel Strawn / Building Permit

 We have long been involved in optical seductions-from Vermeer’s camera lucida to the discovery and influential incorporation in art, design and architecture of all the beasties and structures seen, known for the first time, in the microscope, not to mention the explosion of scale in our concept of the universe via the telescope.

Mel Strawn / Urban Night Rite X

What is also distinct is the fine scale of the elements that can be used in making a digital image. Abstractly-bits, ones and zeroes; concretely, pixels. We can invoke and conduct like an orchestra’s maestro. These technological extensions of our eyes and hands also extend our potential vision, literally and in the realm of the creative and expressive.

In no way can the potential for incredible detail and complexity possible in digital imaging be matched by hand in a human being’s realistic work-time frame. So, complexity/subtlety, visually perceived, and the radical ability to amplify and modify and transform “signals” is our to-be-explored realm of a distinct and creatively new aesthetic. Yet simplicity sans detail and complexity has its historical and also possible place.Tools have the feedback effect of enabling creative new thought. . . . the thought or the pre-conceived idea to be executed need not precede the use and selection of the tool.

Mel Strawn / Iconic Twist

Toolsets vs Aesthetic

Some only see the tools in the making of art. So, in this view, there is no oil painting aesthetic, nor a digital aesthetic. But this is a narrow view of about art making and art appreciation.

I am reminded of Aristotle’s discussion of different causes – in particular, the formal cause. First, Imagine a pile of bricks; then, imagine that pile of bricks made into a house. The difference is the form (the design or shape of the house). That formal difference is not measurable in the same sense that a brick is measurable.

So, when we point to tools for art making, they have the same lifeless existence as a pile of stones. When put into play to make a specific shape or design, we might ask what shape or design is invoked. Is it random? Were the cave artists of Lascaux making random designs or where their cave paintings signifying what had meaning in their hunting culture. They lived in a specific cultural milieu as well as having specific media (cave walls) and specific tools that were employed. And these were different from that complex of ideas that existed in other places and times.

It is easy to overlook the invisibility of ideas that form part of the mix of using a toolset, but these are just as important as the tools themselves. The tools do not move themselves.

In talking of a digital aesthetic, then, the discussion is part of individuals, their toolsets, their media, their cultural milieu (perhaps zeitgeist) feeding off one another. Compartmentalizing them is an example of a category mistake.

Paradigm shifts – accounting for change

An important aspect about a digital aesthetic is how it is, and is not, getting inserted into the canons of art, especially the canon of Western art since the digital age has sprung from Western technology (though not limited to it).

Clearly, all the world around us is falling under the influence of digital. In the world of art, the digital influence is accepted more as a reproduction and database technology than as an essential ingredient into the contemporary, pluralistic aesthetic. This is less true in popular culture where digital FX has become important commercially. Think Avatar! Think Shrek! Think video games!

Less obvious are inclusionary fine art exhibits. One exception I encountered was in Florence, Italy last year. I noticed two side-by-side posters outside the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence.

One poster sported a collective show of the work of Picasso, Miró, Dalí – Angry Young Men: the Birth of Modernity. Adjacent to that poster was another, but one featuring art in digital media - Virtual Identities, a reflection on digital culture.

The distinction was one of medium and time period – modern followed by the digital age. Importantly, there is no remnant of that elitist distinction of more noble vs less noble or more intellectual vs more mechanical. What the Strozzi was showing were two equal art adventures with different media, different technology contexts, different cultures defined by the passage of time.

From my perspective, the Western canon needs a swift kick in the posterior. Time to acknowledge the digital aesthetic.

I do see the need to demonstrate how the digital aesthetic actually operates upon a specific cultural tradition, in this case, the Western canon of 2D visual art. For this, the reader is invited to continue reading in the companion article, Illustrating the digital aesthetic: Reimagining Innocent.

(1) Aesthetics as a Branch of Philosophy, Ruth Saw and Harold Osborne, British Journal of Aesthetics Volume ONE, Issue 1, Pp. 6-20 (2) The Social Position of the Artist, Anthony Blunt, Artistic Theory in Italy 1450-1660. (3) Beauty in context: towards an anthropological approach to aesthetics, Wilfried Van Damme.

Max Eternity, Lecture and Presentation | Chandra Cerrito Contemporary -  On Saturday, March 10th at 2pm, Max Eternity will give a talk at Chandra Cerrito Contemporary Gallery in Downtown Oakland, California.  It’s a dialog entitled Art Theory 2012: Compression and Convergence in the Digital Age.

As one of the world’s foremost thinkers on digital and virtual art, Eternity will share core ideas about the overall effect of digital technology, specifically as it relates to art, civic life and the rapidly evolving social fabric and cultural landscape of the last decade.

For this event, which will include a reception beforehand and Q&A afterwards, Eternity will cite examples of visual artists and other creative individuals–working locally and throughout the world–who who have embraced the digital-age paradigm shift of weaving technology and the arts—reinventing the way artistic endeavors becomes manifest.

Eternity also will present his thoughts on the re-emergence of “total art” as a ubiquitous and forceless integration and gestation of creativity, a concept that was a century ago referred to as Gesamtkunstwerk.

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About Chandra Cerrito Gallery: Established in 2007 as a curatorial project space, Chandra Cerrito Contemporary features exhibitions and site-specific installations that highlight exceptional regional and national artists, with an emphasis on conceptual strength, refined craftsmanship, contemporary vision and art historical relevance.  For more information, and to RSVP, contact Dasha at Chandra Cerrito Contemporary.

Max Eternity @ Art Digital Magazine | News – The Arts Council for Long Beach (California) presents sound and art performances and presentations, with music by Sea Moon and Whalesound  The show opens February 18 and runs til April 15, 2012.  The show is part of The Collaborative, which seeks to raise awareness of “both emerging artists and new innovative approaches to art.”  Click here for additional images and show details.

Max Eternity @ Art Digital Magazine | News - George Fifield, the founder of the Boston Cyberarts Festival–a biennial digital and virtual art exhibition and presentation of colossal proportions–has done it again, with a new public art project called  “Art on the Marquee.”  This is Fifield’s latest collaborative foray, working in partnership with the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, who have commissioned visual art for display–in rotation alongside marquee announcements and advertisements–on their new 80-foot-tall multi-screen LED marquee; located at the site of the Boston Conention & Exhibition Center in South Boston.  It’s a clever and creative use of the urban and digital landscape folding in as one, incorporating commercial and fine art in text and design.  Visit the “Art On The Marquee” website for more info.

Max Eternity, Artworks Magazine (2009) | Report:  As digital art becomes more mainstream, artists, collectors and galleries alike are having to conceptualizing new ways to function in the marketplace; simultaneously facing the challenges of new media conservation, authentication and provenance.  Yet with a growing market at stake, digital editions are serious business, even though there’s some resistance.

One person with doubts about digital is Andy Weiner, co-owner of Spaightwood Galleries.  Weiner and his partner Sonja have tens of thousands of prints in inventory; a large percentage of which dates back several centuries.  Even so, around 8,000 pieces are of 20^th century artists like Warhol, Chagall, Kandinsky and Matisse.  Still the gallery carries no digital editions.

Expressing his fears about conservation, “I’m not sure about the life expectancy of digital prints” Weinar says.  Also asking, “will the inks last?”  Since the value of any edition is in part based on condition, it’s a legitimate question to ask.  Then in citing a lack of information available for study, he contemplates further saying “more research and results need to be published, perhaps from a well-established periodical like Art on Paper or the British Print Review.”

Kirstin Heming, Director of Pace Prints inNew York, takes a more confident approach to digital editions.  Maybe it’s because the gallery has been selling digital prints since the mid 90’s.  “Our collectors are more secure with the process” she says.  And in regards to conservation of digital inks, Heming says “initially, it may have been a concern, like when we did our first exhibit with Kiki Smith in 1997.  8 years ago, however, inks became less of a worry.”  Indicating that was around the time when ink quality had become engineered to last for centuries instead of decades.  But when asked about the gallery’s protocol for issuing limited digital editions “that distinction is not clearly made” Heming replied.  For some, this is a red flag, because less familiar collectors tend assume that digital automatically means reproduction, or worse–fake.

At the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art (LACDA), Rex Bruce, has a very firm stance on issuing protocol.  Bruce, LACDA’s director, says that the art center only shows original singles and limited editions, known as multiple originals.  “There is a huge difference between multiple originals and reproductions” says Bruce.  For that reason “we never show digital reproductions. “

Bruce is also an artist.

“One thing that should be understood is that people have been buying and selling limited editions a long, long time” he says.  “Digital seems new, and in many ways it is.”  Still, he adds “it fits quite nicely in the history of buying and selling prints.”

Addressing the issue of conservation and archival ink quality, Bruce says “digital printing far exceeds expectations…in many instances being better than lithographs, in light-fastness and archival quality.”

Now, assuming that conservation issues are essentially under control, what of provenance and authenticity?  David Rudd Cycleback, art historian and author of “Judging the Authenticity of Prints by the Masters” says, “whether you are talking about a 1650 Rembrandt etching or a 2005 digital print, things like originality, artistic quality and number in existence, affect value and desirability.”  Cycleback also offers a straight-forward analysis of authenticity, saying that “something is authentic when its label or description matches its true identity.”  Then turning to provenance he says “when the collector keeps the receipt or mailing envelope with the artist’s return address, that’s known as hard to beat provenance documentation.”  Truly, for digital editions, this may be the best assurance.

Yet interestingly, in Cycleback’s opinion, existing rules for collecting already encompasses the digital.  And his reasoning seems in line with that of Gabor Perterdi, the late Yale art historian and master printer who once wrote “certain modern processes for reproducing texts and illustrations…are no longer dependent on the mechanical concept of pressure or even on the material concept of colouring agent…printing should probably now be defined as any of several techniques for reproducing texts and illustrations, in black and in colour, on a durable surface and in a desired number of identical copies.”

Cycleback agrees.  “A digital computer printer is a modern version of the centuries old printing press.”   Why?  Because he says, “today’s computer and digital prints can be called prints just as the traditional etchings, engravings and lithographs are called prints.”

So does this mean that the medium has arrived?

Artist Don Relyea has one of the oldest fine art blogs on the internet.  Relyea’s approach to art embraces the concept of digital media convergence.  His Internet site features music, prints and moving images, where he blogs about his family as well.  In Relyea’s words “the internet is a great tool for emerging artists to keep people informed about the projects they are working on.”

Earlier this year Relyea exhibited at Digital Graffiti, held atAlys Beach,Florida.  The festival is not necessarily a big money maker.  However “some work should just be shown for free” says Relyea.   Nevertheless, he’s no stranger to profit. “I do sell limited video editions of 2 or 3, which come with a hand signed blue ray disc, and a signed print of one of my favorite video stills extracted from the work.”  But poignantly, in the end he says “this new media space is still evolving.”

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This article was originally published in 2009 by Artworks Magazine

Max Eternity for AD MAG | News – The Whitney Museum of American Art–located in uptown NYC, near Central Park, and housed in one of Marcel Breuer’s most iconic, béton brut, architectural designs–announced today the redesign and relaunch of Artport. Christiane Paul–a noted professor of digital art and new media, and author of several books on the subject–is the Whitney’s adjunct curator of digital and new media, and wrote today in a press release:

Artport is the Whitney Museum’s portal to Internet art and an online gallery space for commissions of net art and new media art. Originally launched in 2002, Artport provides access to original art works commissioned specifically for artport by the Whitney; documentation of net art and new media art exhibitions at the Whitney; and new media art in the Museum’s collection.

Two new works have been commissioned by the museum for Artport: Ursula Endlicher’s “Light and Dark Networks” and Scott Snibbe’s “Tripolar,” a work that was originally commissioned by the Whitney for its 2002 CODeDOC exhibition, and is now also available as an iPhone and iPad app.

Additional information, and a varied selection of original Internet art, including the cheeky and politically plaful “Clickistan” by Ubermorgan.com, can be found here.

Max Eternity for Art Digital Magazine | Art Review | Interview - Continuing through January 21^st at Johansson Projects, is an engaging group exhibition entitled New Document.  It’s a highly-cerebral display that offers an artistic exploration into physical and virtual space, which includes a localized view of shared material, linguistic and metaphysical culture filtered through the entwined entrepreneurial psyches of 4 talented artists:   Andrew Chapman, Matthew Draving, Hunter Longe and Hugh Zeigler.

New Document is a collective effort that comes manifest through a realized and cogent body of work employing various forms of paint and other mixed-media, light and translucent planes, computer aided design and mechanical kinetics.  Though not to be taken too seriously, with these artists one should expect a certain amount of cheeky folly, cynical light-heartedness and playful irony, as well.

What follows is a curiously enlightening dialog led by artist and writer, Max Eternity, in conversation with two of show’s artists—who also doubled as co-curators—Matthew Draving and Hunter Longe:

Max Eternity (ME): Hi Matthew, let’s start with you.  Could you tell me how this show came about, and how it fits within Johanssen Projects mission statement framework?

Matthew Draving (MD):  New Document was curated by Hunter and I.  We were asked to do the show with the understanding of our work being out of typical context of the other shows that have passed through Johanssen Projects, but still to have a progressive stance.

In terms of concept and context in what’s going on.  The gallery has always been on the forefront, finding artist that are not just making sellable works, but also doing creative things that question how our culture relates to objects and images and the art world as a whole.  Our shows have often been toward relating the real and unreal—thinking about how humans behave in their natural habitat and how they can detach from that, and be involved in something that is on a different contextual plane than what we’re used to seeing.

ME:  And for you Hunter, what was your vision as co-curator?

Hunter Longe (HL):  I think I was particularly interested in the transition of artwork through lots of mediums—the way it’s documented and presented—the way we view art.   Looking through the computer and the Internet on how we view art and altered it to make art—that seemed obvious in some cases, and not in others.

Perhaps the medium is decided by the idea.  We’re trying not to be limited.

MATT:  Hunter and I—in our work—had these themes of descriptors creeping into other materials and processes that seem more traditional, like the sculpture that was placed in front of video to make a seamless images, or images that were derived from other processes.

We started recognizing all these other themes, with digital descriptors…like windows and documents and how those things became integral to the way we make and view art.

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ME:  So, let’s talk specifically about some of the work.  Matthew, you can start.

MD:  Hugh’s large painting is called “LONGHANDLONGHAND” and was created for this show.  He started out with the painting, using corrugated cardboard that was cutout and painted, which was arranged to form a flattened idea of space.  It’s almost an image of what could be a sculpture; referenced by the black pieces that look like shadows.

He has aspects that look like a diptych, but it’s scrolling.

We’re looking at screens all the time—looking at one part and scrolling and having pieces in different places on the screen.  We’re conditioned to think outside of traditional painting, it’s cropping.

Next to it is what looks like mock-up photographs or documentation of the painting.  They are smaller scale sculptures out of that same cardboard and photographed.  In this he’s sort of stepping foot in all these different mediums.    And in the gif animation he gives the viewer a moving animation that’s scrolling that seems infinite.

HL:  Yea, I imagine that it’s like repeating patterns in a video game, the background of it.

"LONGHANDLONGHAND" by Hugh Zeigler

ME:  And for you, Hunter, your thoughts on one of the pieces here?

HL:  Andrew Chapman’s piece, it’s called “Hello, my name is vector.”  When I first saw it, I instantly thought of green-screen green.  I thought it couldn’t strictly be a painting.  And in acknowledging the diptych, I noticed that the image on the left is sort of like a redo of the image on the right.

When I talked to Andrew, he told me that he did the whole thing with paint.  And I find it an instructing stage the he would be informed by digital logic, but he’d be doing it all with analog techniques; making his own tools to create this very flat surface, which seems to be devoid of the hand, but is all hand made.

There seems to be a divide between the computer and the handmade, but there’s so much back and forth, so it’s hard to tell.

MD:  Yeah, this painting is a new take on trompe l'oeil.  The left side is an emanation of the other side.

Throughout the whole show there is a resistance to take the easy path, which often times come through digital production.  So, often times the easy path looks like it’s creating the same end result.  It has so many subtle visual clues we’re familiar with.  With “I/O Glyphics” we’re thinking about the ease of use with animation, what looks 3-dimensional, but in the end is done with what took longer.

We’re looking at the photographic truth in video.

ME:  So, true.  Any last thoughts about the show.

Hunter:  I was originally intrigued by the idea of making a fake 3D animation, and that it would become a real 3 object that looks like an animation, using no digital clues.  It’s this roundabout way of getting to something you could get to quickly.

There are so many layers of trompe l’oeil.  There’s something un-humorous in that, and we’re reacting to our times.  This aesthetic of digital art making is becoming a more mainstream of image making.

Matt:  We had all these different languages and materials of the process—the thought process that we used mirrored the finished result.  So, it’s not only that all these objects have this process, but how we as artists came to them.

New Document runs December 15 - January 21, 2012.  Contact Johansson Projects.

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By Max Eternity

“Asteroids #4: Small Stack Levitate” by E*Rock

Max Eternity for Art Digital Magazine| Interview – Haunting, melodic, mysterious, edgy and ever so seductive—this is the sound of E*Rock.  Born in Ohio and schooled in New York, E*Rock is a hyper-ethereal, cosmic genius who understands art in the most profound way.   He’s a traditional and digital artist/entrepreneur who continually redefines himself—synthesizing his own unique brand of electronica and new media that offers alien orchestration and delicious syncopation.

E*Rock’s is a digital-age maestro soaking wet with visual and Internet art, flash graphics, live performance, fashion design, pop iconography and an array of hypnotic sounds so alluring they are sure to make you slap yo momma.

A decade ago he founded Audio Dregs.  It’s an independent record label out of Portland, which has seen as much creativity come through its doors as the UK’s 4AD label did two decades ago.  And like 4Ad, which took new wave, goth and punk to elegant new heights in forward-thinking philharmonics, E*Rock’s Audio Dregs’ label does very much the same today, for a new generation of sensualists.

Recently—in a phone conversation—E*Rock gave Art Digital Magazine an opportunity to explore his inner world.

AD MAG: A lot of people got introduced to your work through the Mumble Boy flash videos.  What was that creative process like?

E*Rock: That was back in the day–the late 90’s.  We kinda became friends through the internet back then.  I was interested in his work, and we had similar interest in music.  He grew up in Japan and we traded music.  I did some animation in college, and I met him after college.

Mumble Boy was in NYC at the time and we just kinda became friends.  I started doing music for him and he got me into flash animation.  He pushed me in another direction.

AD MAG: How do you describe your work to others?

E*Rock: I’ve been so all over the board that I don’t attempt to describe it most of the time.  I work with so many different mediums and people tend to group things, but to me they all kinda cross over at some point.

I design and do music, as well as video, and the impetus to create things comes from an idea of sharing ideas and creative energy.  It’s kinda what I do—what I’m making with these different mediums.

It’s a broad abstract thing I’m going for so I don’t quite know how to explain.  It’s one of those things when you just kinda mix stuff.  I feel that if you think about creative stuff too much it’s too contrived.  You just have to keep making things and not worry about what your style is.

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 AD MAG: Could you talk about Audio Dregs—what’s your involvement there?

E*Rock: That’s the record label that I started 10 years ago.   My brother got into making electronic music and we were doing stuff together, and I released his music.  For a while my brother was helping me, but for the most part it this has been the record label I’ve been running for a long.

 AD MAG: You’re based in Portland—how long have you been an artist, and what’s happening in the music and art there? 

E*Rock: I grew up outside of Cleveland.  Before Portland, I was going to school at Skidmore College

I started right after college.  I majored in studio art.  I was doing printmaking and printing, as well as graphic design.  I was also playing in punk bands.

It’s always been something I’ve done, even in high school.   I was doing home recordings and experimental stuff, and part of the reason I moved to Portland is because it seemed like an open frontier.  The rent was cheap and houses with basements were available.

Portland, it’s the resources and having free time.  It’s still fairly cheap to live here.

There is a good music scene—a good music community.  And when I came here a lot of clubs opened up.  So, there were a lot of places to play.

As far as visual art, it’s not quite as big.  The art world is kinda DIY in this sense.  There’s more music than visual art.

ADMAG:  Any other particular reason you like Portland?

E*Rock:  In Portland, there is a sense of city planning.  The geography of the city is really important.  You don’t need to spend all your time working a full-time job just to pay for your car to get round.  You can actually ride a bike across town to do a dj gig.

AD MAG: As opposed to the US, do you see a different response to your work elsewhere in the world, like Europe or Asia, for instance?

E*Rock: Yea, definitely.  I think most musicians, when they play in Europe they love it…art over there too—the fact that they will give public funding to support the arts.  That’s a weird idea in the US.  For Europeans it’s the way to increase tourism and things like that.  In America, we just don’t value art.  In Europe you can do things on a mainstream level that people wouldn’t even notice in the US, where art is so commoditized.  People get stuck on the dollar value.

I really love to travel, and that’s one of the best things that’s happened for me—giving me this very different view of the world.