Impact 7 - International Printmaking Conference

Panel: A model for the collaborative studio in the 21st Century and the changing role of the Master Printer

This panel sets out several models of practice in a new technological environment and the varying collaborative strategies. Today's digital print studios have largely adopted the traditionally defined print studio practices and associated collaborative print workshop methods. The most influential characteristic of the collaborative print process is the communication between artist and printer; where the printer transcribes the artists’ ideas and aspirations for the work. This is predominantly achieved through verbal communication and a common understanding of the making process. David Adamson of Adamson Editions - a former traditional printmaker now working with digital print technology - cites his communicative success in collaborative digital printmaking as being part of his background in traditional techniques. "…I speak the same language as the artists, and they relate to this…".

Adamson’s collaborative strategy has produced an array of successful digitally-mediated prints with a formidable body of highly established artists. The adoption of the earlier mechanical processes within digital technology has made the transition from one technology to another run more smoothly, but the rapid development of digital technology has created a cultural divide between the two currently existing generations: Those born before 1980, who have come to know the world through mechanical technology and those born after 1980 who know little of its origins and therefore have no allegiance to the physical, and therefore instantly embrace the medium's inherent non-object status. This position leaves us to ponder whether printmaking will have less appeal to the concerns of emerging artists and what kind of facilitation strategy might be required by the digital master printer? If Adamson’s success lay in speaking the same language as the artist; what is the language of the digital native? Or is the language of 'making' universal?

Paper Title: A model for the collaborative studio in the 21st Century: What it might be!
Author: Stephen Hoskins
Abstract:
This paper questions what the model of a collaborative studio might be, what it might look like and how - by examples - it might be found in the future. To answer these questions it frames a number of contexts, which the model might be influenced by or positioned within. In this second decade of the 21st Century, I am fond of quoting the editor in chief of ‘wired’ magazine from an editorial article published in February 2010. (Anderson Chris, 2010)
‘Here’s the history of two decades in one sentence. If the past ten years have been about discovering post-institutional models on the web, then the next ten years will be about applying them to the real world’
How does this apply to the perceived role of the master printer? Which in itself begs three questions: Firstly, what is a master printer in a digital age? Secondly what constitutes a print for a master printer and artist to collaborate over? And, thirdly what does the term collaborative studio mean? The third question will be answered by a short historical overview of the collaborative studio, which allows me to gain insight into my first two questions and supply the context for my initial quote. This will be illustrated by examples of current collaboration undertaken by the Centre for Fine Print Research in order to answer the first and second questions.

Paper Title: The Human Printer Featuring the Print is Dead Series
Author: Paul Laidler
Abstract:
This paper has been developed from a practice-based study for my PhD thesis 2011, entitled: 'Collaborative digital and wide format printing: methods and considerations for the artist and master printer'. The paper discusses the panel's themes of printmaking, collaboration, process, and the digital age as a series of concepts toward the initiation and production of a digitally mediated 'print' series 'Print is Dead' (figures 1, 2, 3 & 4). Here the preoccupation with production and process is emphasised over the end product as a means to address the collaborative print process and the conceptual considerations for the work, engaging with printmaking themes. Whilst the resulting works are not prints in the truest sense, printmaking is imbedded as a means to consider the broadening definition of 'print' in the digital age. In this instance printmaking is considered as an expanded term through the production of paintings and drawings whilst the digitally mediated 'print' is realised through the Print on Demand model - a facility synonymous with digital technology. Collectively the themes and production processes highlight the often de-emphasised collaborative undertaking by printers for artists, and the subsequent acknowledgement of this art category, whilst the resulting artworks challenge assumptions of authorship and originality in the production of artworks for artists.

Paper title: A New Renaissance - Dimension and Light in Digital Printmaking
Author: Brian Gilkes (AUS)

Paper title: Printmaking and Artists' Books: Collaboration and Exchange in a Digital World
Author: J P Willis (GBR)

Dates Tuesday 27 September | Read more at http://www.impact7.org.au/program_tuesday.html

Panel: Printmedia and the Artist's Book

Paper title: Unfolding Projects: Afghan and Australian artists' books collaborations
Author: Gali Weiss (AUS) & Barbara Kameniar (AUS)

Paper title: Artist's book as a diagram of exteriority
Author: Terri Bird (AUS)

Paper title: Reading aloud: The book and shifting forms of social engagement
Author: Lily Hibberd (AUS)

Dates Tuesday 27 September | Read more at http://www.impact7.org.au/program_tuesday.html

Paper title:A Manifesto for the Book - artist's book - artist's publication - book art?
Author: Sarah Bodman (UK)

Abstract
This paper is based on the results of a two-year research project by Sarah Bodman and Tom Sowden, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, March 2008 - February 2010. The project investigated the context and future of the artist's book in an attempt to extend critical debate of what actually constitutes an 'artist's book' in the 21st Century. One key point was to include all the book related activity that artists currently engage with, work that is produced on, and exclusively for, digital technologies within the book arts field, and not leave it floundering on the edge; if the artist considered what they were producing to be a book, then we felt it should be included. We also discussed the continued practice of traditional production processes for artists' books such as letterpress, etching, lithography, screenprint and woodcut, and interviewed a range of artists and publishers who work with these, as well as those producing livres d'artistes, fine press books, design bindings, multiples, installation and audio books.
The project was set up for international artists to openly debate and contribute online with forums through Artist Books 3.0, downloadable survey forms to fill in and diagrams to alter and return for artists, curators, librarians, collectors, teachers, students, dealers and publishers. We used these alongside findings from our series of in-depth interviews and case studies with 53 artists and other professionals involved in the book arts in many countries including: Australia, USA, Denmark, Poland, Belgium, Canada, Turkey, Lebanon, South Africa, South Korea, Cyprus, Japan, Italy, Singapore, Argentina, Norway, Germany, Estonia, UK, Ireland, Russia, France, Spain and Brazil. We also hosted symposia and a conference, with an exhibition of 119 international artists' books to show examples of contemporary works. All of the outcomes from the project are available as free downloads (http://www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/canon.htm).

Dates Wednesday 28 September | Read more at http://www.impact7.org.au/program_wednesday.html

Paper title: Follow-ed (after hokusai)
Author: Presented by Sarah Bodman (UK) on behalf of Tom Sowden (UK)

Abstract
I can't stop making books in the style of Ed Ruscha. It has become an obsession, and my failure in trying to replicate an Ed Ruscha book, whilst always trying to succeed, is entirely part of the appeal to me. I don't live in 1960s California and my city is not as aspirational a place as Los Angeles was then, but I am not alone in this and many other artists share my passion and also produce books in an Ed Ruscha style. But why do we do this?

This paper first looks at my own practice and my journey as an Ed Ruscha rip-off act, and then looks at some of the books from my collection of Ed Ruscha tribute books. Direct tributes such as the amazingly faithful reproduction of Royal Road Test; Macintosh Road Test by Corinne Carlson, Karen Henderson and Marla Hlady - true to the spirit even in the clothes they are wearing for the photographs - in which they substituted a Macintosh Plus (Model 'X') computer for the original Royal typewriter; to more conceptual books such as Doro Bîhme and Eric Baskauskas' Various Blank Pages, which presents all the blank pages from Nine Swimming Pools, Colored People, A Few Palm Trees and Various Small Fires.

Although the books collected so far vary enormously in size, subject matter and style, they all have an intrinsic 'Ed' theme, however tenuous the connection may be. The prevailing quality that I feel they all have is the element of humour reminiscent of Ruscha. Where each artist has taken one of Ruscha's books and reinvented it with a knowing twist; referencing with wit, the time and environment that they find themselves in, just as Ruscha did in the 60s and 70s.

Dates Wednesday 28 September | Read more at http://www.impact7.org.au/program_wednesday.html