_southern cross university, 2013
Seeking to evoke the inscription of the digital medium by hand creating pixelated face sections of the selected foundlings, I discovered that you can access the code of an image by opening the image into ‘TextEdit’ (Apple’s text editing program). The quantity of data generated for each image (An average A4 image @ 300ppi generates approx. 500pg pdf file as a jpeg, a tiff approx. 15,000pg) coupled with the pixelated face of the unidentified foundlings, indirectly alludes to the social concern with data collection (Eg. “FaceBook inadvertently exposed the private information of 6 million users when Facebook’s previously unknown shadow profiles accidentally merged with user accounts in data history record requests” zdnet, 23-6-13).
Comprising in total 10 individual foundlings with 36 books per foundling, the intensive process of hand binding the books became a process of metaphor in binding the past to the present. By the code of the image becoming ‘in-the-visible’, which in theory could be inputted into a computer and encoded to produce the whole image, the books, presented in handmade wooden data files, develop the notion of being a future hand crafted digital archive. Thus it paradoxically raises the question, what will the future archive look like (personal or national) if their isn’t an object &/or will we be able to read or understand it (eg digital storage devices…I personally own floppy discs that I cannot retrieve the data from).
The metaphoric extension of the binding thread could either allude to the notions that hair continues to grow after we die; the interconnected network of the digital environment; or McNeil’s cobwebbed studio. During installation (please refer below or to ‘traces’ & ‘hatched 2014’ installations) sets of books will be available for viewers to reconstruct as images by trial and error, which encompasses notion of play and discovery (ie akin to childhoodism), or via the x-y axis coding system on the back of each book. Viewing the work in this way, the resulting installation aims to play upon the notion of them being, yes an archive of the future, but an interactive, hands on accessible archive…
_naming protocol
example…
_process
_installation
The ‘present past’ series of prints on corroded aluminium embodies the notion of the medium remembering the act of its material process with the aim being to {re}create its ‘aura’ (re Walter Benjamin, 1935, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction). By including images of mothers/grandmothers with children (the past and the present together), I see it as a visual symbol of my research and methodology…the past (aesthetic) technologies nurturing, supporting and guiding the present (infant) technology. Referencing traditional printmaking etching techniques by corroding (etching) the aluminium with sea salt and copper sulphate, the aluminium substrate also remembers the act of its material process via the gestural act of tearing and bending the sheets of aluminium…all of which aims to evoke the gesture of searching, discovery and creation.
The use of aluminium also references the somewhat mythological notion that aluminum causes or contributes to memory loss or Alzheimer’s disease…thus implying the organic nature of human memory with it’s erasure and additions, all of which is counter the never forgetting static digital memory. It also plays upon the concept/symbolism of aluminum being a ‘contemporary’ medium…one that the modern world has relied upon (eg the computer industry…my macbook pro). Thus the corrosion and use of the aluminum is seen to run counter to the preconceived notion of the perfection of the digital image by evoking and embracing the corrosion of the digital substrate.
_alternate versions & printing tip
kurtis adamson 