artist books

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…

f_Ø_360

f_Ø_133 (detail-books)

f_Ø_133 (detail-book χċφf)

_naming protocol

example…

f_Ø_360 (The abbreviated title ‘f_Ø_…’ alludes to the notion of them being a ‘facebook’. The numbering is my own file management number for the foundlings, with the last set of books and the total of books made being 360…the recommended dpi for printing with the Epson 3880).
χċφf (back reference code using x y axis to reconstruct foundling face)

_process