Research: Visual Interference

Found images of TV static, research for new work concerning examples of 'visual interference'.

Television is a gift of God, and God will hold those who utilize his divine instrument accountable to him -- Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of the modern television.

Noise in analogue video and television is perceived as a random dot pattern which is superimposed on the picture as a result of electronic noise and radiated electromagnetic noise picked up by the receiver's antenna. Due to the algorithmic functioning of a digital television set's electronic circuitry and the inherent quantization of its screen, the 'snow' seen on digital TV is less random.

Anatomy of a Projection.

Left: Viral I (detail), graphite on paper
Right: Viral II (detail), graphite on paper

The Viral series of drawings, which will be previewed at the Delineation: Contemporary Dialogues with Drawing exhibition in October, explores the relationship between mechanically produced and hand rendered marks. The works reproduce the toner traces left on distorted photocopies of found images, projected and traced to generate a large-scale exact copy of the disrupted images. Viral I presents the pixellated visual interferences retained when images are processed through a digital projector attached to a laptop, Viral II the comparatively smooth contours of lines presented by projecting image data through an OHP - digital vs analogue information.

Delineation: Artists' Talk Confirmed 30/10/10

Exciting news...
TBC Artists' Collective can now confirm that there will be a free artists' talk as part of the supporting programme for Delineation: Contemporary Dialogues with Drawing. It will be led by artist and writer John Timberlake, who will discuss the key considerations of the exhibition in relation to current drawing practice in contemporary art. A number of the exhibiting artists will be present to take questions from the audience.

Timberlake is an artist whose practice embraces drawing, painting and photography, and whose work is in a number of public and private collections in Europe and the US. He is Programme Leader in BA Fine Art, Middlesex University.

Further details on the talk and how to reserve a place are available at: tbc-artistscollective.blogspot.com/

Viral II: Progress

After two days of drawing Viral II is progressing well. Still many more days of work ahead...

Coming Soon - 12 Pages

The new edition of 12 Pages, 12 Minutes, will be available soon featuring specially commissioned work from members of TBC Artists' Collective.

For an exclusive preview: tbc-artistscollective.blogspot.com

Work on Viral II begins

The start of a second work for the forthcoming TBC exhibition Delineation: Contemporary Dialogues with Drawing, which translates mechanical information into an analogue drawn language. Toner traces from enlarged, distorted photocopies are redrawn by hand.

Sketches

'The photocopier is one of the most recent in a long line of instruments conceived for the mechanical reproduction of visual material. But unlike predecessors such as lithography and photography, which originated from an artistic as well as a mechanical urge for perfect representation, the photocopy was not conceived in any way as a tool for artists...

...The price paid for the factual reproduction of reality was termed 'the loss of the aura' by Walter Benjamin, who in the 1930s meticulously chronicled the extermination of the artistic aura (unique singularity) through mechanical reproduction. According to Benjamin, 'the dynamite of the tenth of a second' in photography and film blew away traditional notions of art appreciation as contemplative fetishism. If we extend Benjamin's chronology to the present day, then photocopying and video can be seen as successors in the 1980s to photography and film. Yet our present vantage point also permits us to advance beyond Benjamin's verdict on the aura and to see our destruction not only as inevitable due to technological progress, but also, in artistic terms, as necessary.'

From Christian Brensing, Refracted Origins, A Brief History of the Photocopy.