journey through blur landscape
the hand and the margins: i spent the weekend experimenting with screen print bitmaps. i had a particular process in mind that i wanted to try using the ‘wrong’ side of the transparent film. over the years i have accidentally printed my bitmaps on the wrong (glossy) side of the transparent film which means the ink doesn’t fix and so makes it possible to manipulate the ink on the surface – moving, dragging or smearing the ink with the hands and fingers. i often thought that this could be an interesting way of working landscape’s image as it ties in with many things i have been questioning in terms of landscape as image, landscape as bodily experience and image manipulation. i came across a paper (Riches, 2014) which discusses the gendering of different image making processes where wet materiality and manipulation are feminised by its association with the earthy body as opposed to the realms of thought and ideas. again binaries everywhere. anyway here are a few of the prints i worked on this weekend. a questioning or mixing up of these binaries i suppose.
transparency bitmaps and the hand manipulation of their inks
the printing process
some screen prints using the blurred bitmaps
reflection: i think there is lots more i could do with this process. maybe work bigger and with bigger physical gestures. i am interested in how the formal grids of bitmaps are interrupted and manipulated by the movement of the body. this action or movement also brings an energy to the image and its regulated bitmap dots. the properties of ink are also to the fore – wet properties capable of flow yet formalised and made static by a repeated printing process. i also think that it asks me question about were i think the edges of the frame is or should be – all very relevant to ideas i am working on related to the rectilinear frame, gender and the fixing of experience as image. next steps? i think i want to return to this process and get a better idea of what it is capable of saying, especially in relation to the edges of the image frame – maybe follow this through and spread the ink as far as i can, making the edges of the frame unpredictable?
FURTHER DEVELOPMENT
physical making and the horizontal frame: i am switching over and back between research writing and physical making…. both seem to be informing each other which is always the point i suppose. the last few sessions of making continues a process that i began a few months ago, where i printed my bitmaps for screen printing on the wrong side of the transparencies so i could physically extend or spread the image’s ink beyond the parameters of the rectilinear frame – a disruption of the idealised horizontal extension of the landscape towards a picturesque idyll. through hand manipulation, this type of extension seems to have a destructive effective on the image – as if wiping out or spoiling it, yet brings an energy from the physical gesture.
physical making, wet processes and manipulation: i have also been researching and writing about the gendering of image making processes, where wet processes are feminised because they relate to matter of the world, touch, the body, subjectivity and an unpredictability of outcomes – in other words, all things not cerebral, uniform, rational and objective. the manipulation of image also suggests the doctoring of the image away from the objective truth implied in a snap shot moment in time. i deliberately chose to print a small edition to formulise these one off bodily gestures through this systematic printing processes.
physical making process: i decided to work in black ink only because when i attempted adding another colour it seemed to dilute the gesture of the ink across the image and the landscape image became unreadable – i wonder if that is the point? i tried this process in lots of ways – choosing a single landscape from various points out on a days walking. i wonder if my waliking movement could inform the gesture and manipulation of the ink? … some images of the process.
transparencies for exposure
inking up
screen print images
close ups
edition
reflection: i think the monochrome black works in terms of keeping the gesture to the focus of the image, which would only get complicated or diluted by adding colour. of course i could complete a full colour range through to all its CMYK layers so that the colour is ‘life-like’ and therefore might not detract. i am interested in how they look close up – with all their bitmap dots in rows and the washes across them. i also wonder how the image might work at a larger scale and with larger physical and bodily gestured. i wonder also if i could pronounce the bitmap size and density? anyway, for the moment i will let this sit, but i do plan on scaling up with another series i am developing. i also think the complete edition is important to the work – its systematic repetition of a random gesture because it plays into those gendered binaries of objectivity/subjectivity, body/thought, manipulation/unmanipulation etc…. sometimes i find everything relating back to these key questions about gender and their binaries.
references:
Riches, H. (2014) Picture Taking and Picture Making – Gender Difference and the Historiography of Photography. At: https://www.academia.edu/14263288/_Picture_Taking_and_Picture_Making_Gender_Differe nce_and_the_Historiography_of_Photography (Accessed 04.01.20).
elaine crowe 
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