New tech vs old tech

Fragmented closure, digital prints & sepia toned gelatin silver photographs, 813mm x 1220mm
KRIS SMITH

Kris Smith has been busy in the darkroom creating a new work for the Tracing Site exhibition opening at Newcastle Museum this Thursday. We're not sure if Kris is the first to take an iPad into the darkroom and use it to create an image with help from a trusty enlarger, but we reckon he must be up there. The image above comprises both digital and analogue photographs representing in a physical way the integration of old and new technologies. Kris speaks of the work as 'referencing the fact that so-called outmoded technology underpins and is embedded into the new. In a reversal of this, the new embedded into the old, the iPod/iPhone screen is used in a literal sense, via a projection lens, to create an image on traditional photographic paper.' The image below is a detail of an analogue component.

Fragmented closure (detail)
KRIS SMITH

Trend: Compactus

IDRIS KAHN

Idris Kahn's Every… Bernd And Hilla Becher… is an homage to the Becher's iconic typological studies of water towers, gas reservoirs and other feats of modernist engineering structures. Kahn's work (left) digitally overlays each Becher typology to form monumental images that read more like drawings than photographs. Where the Becher's images could be read as literal, perhaps even cold, studies, Kahn's have a haunting quality hinting at a dystopian future.

This layering technique was masterminded by Nancy Burson who made striking composite images of political figures and celebrities in the 1980s pre Photoshop. Japanese artist Ken Kitano, like Nancy Burson, is interested in people. Ken's work (right) takes groupings of people and layers them together to reveal a single subject.

Schrodinger's Cat

Scrodinger's Cat
JONATHAN ZAWADA

Perhaps conjuring Walter Benjamin's seminal essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' Jonathan Zawada's work utilises code to produce his Twisty series of works, of which Scrodinger's Cat (left) is one. Jonathan comes from a design background, mostly working with detailed drawings and paintings. The Twisty series is a departure from that method of working exploring instead the processing and manipulation of digital images through algorithms. The following text written by Jonathan is an insight into his practice.

The majority of the artwork I produce tends to be fairly involved, densely conceptually layered and heavily worked. As I've come from a design background, most of my art is a reaction to that sense of  superficial image and focuses on detailed handwork in it's production. The Twisty series of works is really an inversion of that. Although I use programming and multiple software packages in the preparation of my paintings and drawings, the Twisty series is pure digital artwork. Really they are an attempt for me to do something that is purely gestural and expressionistic but as that doesn't come naturally to me I focused on writing code in the processing environment that could accomplish this for me.

What I have realized as a result of this (and the other "Furry Paintings" I have made with Processing) is that this opens up a whole new avenue for me to explore the creation of visual art which is aesthetically completely cut-off from my concurrent visual art practice in painting and drawing. As the rest of my art practice is more conceptually than aesthetically based, the programming environment gives me a sort of sneaky back door way of accessing and exploring simple compositional and aesthetic play without being influenced or informed by my design background - the resultant visual images are not the result of human decision making or intervention but of cold mathematical play that seems to me to reveal very warm humanistic results.

In Lytro

We're always excited by new cameras, and the Lytro is no exception. Lytro's Light Field Camera promises to change the way we shoot by allowing us to shoot on the run and consider where the focus is later - and be able to change it. Wired have an interesting article about the mechanics of the camera, but for now we'll have to be patient and wait for its release later this year. In the meantime you can play around on-line to see just what it is capable of.

Look Out: Pixel Panels

Home Movies 920-1, 2006
JIM CAMPBELL 

It's hard not be mesmerised by Jim Campbell's large-scale works. Utilising digital technologies, live video and real-time electronic manipulation, viewers are immersed into environments that tackle Jim's key themes of light, memory and knowledge. Jim's recent 4 Works exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery in New York delved deeper into his explorations of fathoming the limits of human understanding through the use of large-scale LED grids, which required viewers to negotiate negative space. We're looking forward to seeing images from a new piece commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, due for installation in November 2011.