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ED 370 595 IR 055 048

AUTHOR Witte, Mary Stieglitz TITLE The Artist, the Color Copier, and Digital Imaging. PUB DATE 93 NOTE 7p.; In: Visual Literacy in the Digital Age: Selected Readings from the Annual Conference of the International Visual Literacy Association (25th, Rochester, New York, October 13-17, 1993); see IR 055 055. PUB TYPE Viewpoints (Opinion/Position Papers, Essays, etc.) (120) Reports - Descriptive (141) -- Speeches/Conference Papers (150)

EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Artists; Art Products; *Computer Oriented Programs; *Copyrights; Design; *Ethics; Futures (of Society); Photography; *Reprography; *Technological Advancement IDENTIFIERS *Digital Imagery

ABSTRACT The impact that color-copying technology and digital imaging have had on art, photography, and design are explored. Color copiers have provided new opportunities for direct and spontaneous image making an the potential for new transformations in art. The current generation of digital color copiers permits new directions in imaging, but the manipulations possible with digital images create ethical quandaries that are not yet fully realized. Digital imagery also diminishes the distinction between originals and multiples. Appropriation of an original is quick and effortless, and can beseen as either a concern or an opportunity. The wizardry of digital color copiers and related computer technologies is reminiscent of the magical quality attributed to photography in its early years. The potential for new constructs offered by digital imaging can beseen as both opportunity and concern. (Contains 5 references.) (8LD)

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The Artist, the Color Copier, and Digital Imaging

by Mary Stieglitz Witte

Boise State University 3237 Stone Creek Way Boise, Ill 83703

"PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY Alice Walker

TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 2 INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)." BEST COPY AVAILABLE The Artist, the Color Copier, and Digital Imaging

Mary Stieglitz Witte

BACKGROUND surfaces. Color copiers became a new tool In 1938 Chester Carlson produced for artists, photographers and designers. the first electrophotograph.His 1939 They provided opportunity for direct, patent, described the 'electrophotographic spontaneous image making with potential copying apparatus' which would evolve for new transformations. into the first commercially successful photocopier.The Haloid Corporation 'Electroworks', a major copy-art developed Carlson's process, and as exhibitionwasinstalledbythe Haloid Xerox, released the Xerox Model International Museum of Photography at D in 1950, and the celebrated Xerox 914 George Eastman House, Rochester, New in 1959.Artists experimented with York, in 1979. The exhibit included a photocopiers as soon as copy machines varied collection of two hundred and forty- appeared in worksites.Artists were five works ranging from experimental intrigued when full color copiers appeared photomontages to limited edition books on the market. The 3-M Color-in-Color and clothing.In the catalogue, guest System I was introduced in 1968. By curator Marilyn McCray referred to copy 1970, Sonia Landy Sheridan established a art as having "generated activity all over program in 'Generative Systems' at the Art the world.These highly stylized and Institute of Chicago which incorporated individualized works of art are collected by this new color copier Sheridan described major museums and sold by art dealers the program as one "which brought artists and galleries for prices that amaze the and scientists together,... aneffort at inventors of the processes and the pioneers turning the artist's passive role into an of photo-copier marketing."2 T h e active one by promoting the investigation exhibition clearly demonstrated the of contemporary scientific-technological potential of color copiers as tools for the systems and their relationship to art and visual arts. life."1 In 1982, the Cznimg&pitusn was As the seventies proceeded, artists established in Montreal (Quebec), Canada. were working with the 3-M Color-in- The Centre's replete blend of exhibitions, Color System I and II, and with the Color workshops, research, and catalogues, Xerox 6500.Xerox and 3-M both promoted the meeting of art and employed three-color systems and light- technology. Jacques Charbonneau, lens technology, which offered potentials founder and managing director, described as well as limits.The Xerox 6500 the Centre's research consequences: dominated the color copier market during "Many artists arrived to a new perception the seventies and eighties.These first of a great creative power which was color copiers offered opportunity for unsuspected prior to the works made creativeimaging,considerable thanks to the Centre."3 The Centre's main manipulation of colors & images, and the goal is to integrate copy-art into the field of transfer of images to a variety of other visual arts. The CcamtCapit:Att closely

3 cooperates with the Museum fiir Fotokopie CLC was the rust of many full color in MUlheim, Germany and the Museo copiers to be introduced into this Internacional de Electrografia in Cuenca, rejuvenated market in the late eighties and Spain, as well as other copy-art centers early nineties. Kodak, Konica, Minolta, worldwide. Mita, Panasonic, Xerox, Richoh and Savin also market color copiers. The Philippe Boissonnet described the related proliferation of full color digital Centre's ongoing 'Artist in Residence printers, plotters, bubble jets, ink jets, Program' as dealing with the expressive thermal transfer and similar devices also and plastic potentialities of the equipment, increased the hard copy alternatives the unexperimented and free exploration. available to visual artists. He cites intent to "create works which would be one-of-a-kind, which would be The current generation of digital original as contrasted to a copy. The idea: color copiers allows increased opportunity try to outspace the limits which are for new directions in imaging. The switch intrinsic to the "copigraphic tool". The from light-lens to digital laser scanning idea:to feature some of the plastic vastly expanded copier capabilities. characteristics inherent to the medium."4 Digital technology offers greater user control, versatility in creative editing, and In 1982, Louise Odes Neaderland resolution.Laser scanners 'read' the founded the International Society of image, capture the image digit-by-digit, Copier Artists in New York City. and process the information by computer. Neaderland reports that the impetus for As input, the copiers accept color negative founding ISCA was thelack of or positive transparencies (photographed opportunity to share and show copier art. or hand-made), prints, or actual objects on The Society promotes and recognizes the the glass. The new machines print on a use of the copier as a fine art tool. variety of surfaces, and in dimensions Neaderland continues to direct ISCA and from standard stationery to billboard size. publish the 1SCA Quarterly, of which one issue a year is dedicated to bookworks. Some of the new color copiers 'this annual 'box of books' is a favorite of have peripheral units which allow the both artists and collectors. copier to accept input from a variety of sources, including computer files in Artistmembers include several file formats, video signals, and printmakers, painters, photographers, CD-ROM imagery.This continuing graphic designers, book artists and integration of digital capabilities has computer graphists. More than twenty- created many new tools for the artist. five museum and institutional members Innovative electrophotographic technology worldwide subscribe to the Quarterly, a and digital connectivity will break down limited edition journal composed entirely prevailing boundaries and generate new art of original art.ISCA also mounts forms. traveling Iscagraphics' exhibitions, and maintains an extensive slide archive in DIFFERENTIATION New York. The distinction between digital (discrete) and analog (continuous) NUT DIRECTIONS representation is significant.Digitally In 1988 the Canon Corporation encoded and computer processable images began marketing its Color Laser Copier, are clearly distinguished from that of their the CLC 1. This full color digital laser photographic predecessor. Critical factors copier revolutionized the color copier include differing amounts of information, market with digital scanning, a four color and differing characteristics of replication system, high resolution, and a wide range and manipulation in each format Digital of manipulative capabilities. The Canon information is easyto manipulate, recombine, and transform. and originality."7 She further notes that William J. Mitchell discussed the "The use of the copy ... is one of the new quandary of an era when artists celebrate strategies of postmodern artists who are the potential of digital image manipulation, appropriating images and styles of the past and the press calls for a code of ethics to to critique the conventions of art history regulate manipulation. Mitchell noted that itself -- to deconstruct or unmask the we may "...see the emergence of digital modernist notion that the "original" and imaging as a welcome opportunity to "originality" rightfully dominate in expose the aporias in photography's assigning value to art."8 construction of the visual world, to deconstruct the very idea of photographic REPERCUSSION objectivity and closure, and to resist what Questions usually arise concerning has become an increasingly sclerotic the validity of art done via machine. Some pictorial tradition."5 He also observed that ask if the mark of the human hand isn't "After more than a century and a half of necessary to art. Are mechanical tools the photographic production, we also have to preserve of the unskilled? Do copiers contend with the powerful 'reality effect' encourage illicit appropriation?Can a that the photographic image has by now mechanical system produce works of art constructed for itself."6 that are unique, personal, of aesthetic value? Digital imaging has jolted this reference with its new conventions, Repercussions to machine-aided art understandings, transformations, and are not unique to the twentieth century. forms. Although we may be aware of the With the proliferation of photography by differences between objects and their the 1, lid-nineteenth century, painter Paul photographicrepresentations,the Delaroche is traditionally acknowledged as traditional assumptions about the 'reality' pronouncing 'From this day painting is of photographic images is one problem, dead'.Baudelaire is also said to have and themanipulations possible with offered his observation that 'Industry, by digital images create an even greater invading the territories of art, has become quandary. art's most mortal enemy'. IMPLICATION Photography and industry were not Digital imaging diminishes the fatal to painting and art, but the visual arts customary differentiation between unique were immutably affected. Artists originals and multiples, much as embraced the new technologies and photography affected painting in the expanded their selection of tools and ninteenth century. The photocopier dcnies media. Just as photography proved to be a the provenance and authenticity of time means of expression, creation, and and placetraditional to the arts. The communication;electrostatic media, fidelity of the new copiers diminishes the computers, and electronic imaging now conventional differentiation between offer new modes of visualization. New original and copy. Replication is precise technologies applied to art offer potential and indeciferable from the original. for new constructs, both visual and Appropriation is quick, effortless, and can conceptual. Therefore, one rejoinder is to be seen as a concern or an opportunity. recognize the significance of the artist's concept above the tool, material or Margot Lovejoy writes that "In a process.The originality of the visual sense copier technology represents the act statement does not depend on the rarity of of appropriation itself and stands out as a the image, the laboriousness of handwork site for the Postmodern because it required, intricacy of process, or tradition addresses directly questions having to do of the tool. with the copy and the original, authorship MANSE/MAIM the machine as a large camera, bringing a The current generation of digital variety of objects, images, and materials to imaging is marked by transformation, the copyboarcl glass. One artist may use a mutation, proliferation and velocity. color copier to create a visual diary or self Traditional concepts of image originality portrait, ancther may use it as one would and convol are being challenged, and a employ a small press. The artist may syntax of copier imaging continues to bring to the copier a prepared 'master' develop. The images surveyed in this image, often a collage or synthesized presentation offer a look at current work, and then utilize the copier to print contexts and aesthetic organizations, and the desired number in the edition. Lovejoy perhaps a notion of future directions. notes that "David Hockney calls the Mitchell comments that "Digital imagers collection of office copiers in his studio give meaning and value to computational magic new presses".10 Some artists print readymades by appropriation, a specific edition, signing and numbering transformation,reprocessing,and the edition in the tradition of the recombination; we have entered the age of printmaker.Others tap the 'press' as electrobricollage." 9 needed, often varying the prints and producing unique works rather than The slide survey constitutes the editions. A considerable number of artists `eye' of this IVLA presentation, and use color copiers as a production tool for exemplifies some of these new visual limited edition art books. paradigm& These images, with statements by the artists, speak eloquently. Many of Other artists use color copier prints the artists in the slide survey have had as intermediary images. One example is considerable influence in the use of color using the copier as a device to produce copiers as a tool/medium in the visual arts. elements for the construction of a fmal collage or composition. The artists then THE SURVEY fabricate one-of-a-kind works with color The slides present a visual survey copy elements. An interesting paradox of selected contemporary artists in North exists in this use of a machine engineered America and Europe who utilize color for duplication, employed to create unique, copiers in their work. This sampling one-of-a-kind works of art.Diverse provides a rich repertory by over twenty manipulations during printing, or of the diverse artists exhibiting new visual print afterwards, also result in unique paradigms. Artists approach color copiers images. with diversity, spontaneity, a sense of discovery, exploitation of the technology, Another example of the color and elements of play. The opportunity for copier as intermediary tool, is work artist/machine interaction affords the transferred by heat or solvent transfers to potential for new combines of art and other surfaces.This often produces a technology, and a fresh repertory of softening and/or transformation of the forms, methods, communications, and image which enhances the unique quality interpretations. Many artists attempt to of these works. demolish the confines which are intrinsic to the photocopier.Every tool offers This presenter's experience with particular limits as well as potentials to be color copiers began with the 3M Color-in- considered. The immediacy of Color System I, later the Xerox 6500, and photocopier production is a factor which was reactivated by the Canon CLC 1. My appeals to many artists. work explores perceptual relationships, especially figure and ground interplays. Artists utilize color copiers with With a photography background, I am vast divergence. They differ greatly in challenged by both the meanings my what they bring to the copier. Some use images communicate, and the perceptual aspects of those images.Digital tools References: allow me to release my photoimages from their conventional frameworks and spatial I Sonia Landy Sheridan, "Generative Systems cues, challenging thesetraditional Versus Copy Art", Leonardo, Journal of the concepts. Multiple layers of images are International Society for the Arts, Sciences and combined both physically (via collage) and Technology, Volume 16, No. 2, PP. 103-108, electronically. Figure/ground interplays 1983. P. 103 allownewinterconnectionsand relationships. They play lanong visual and 2 Marilyn McCray, Electroworks, exhibition perceptual codes, assist the perceptual catalog, International Museum of Photography at plays and ploys, and attempt to expand George Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y., 1979 ways of both objective and subjective knowing. 3 Jacques Charbonneau Copies Non Conformes: Artistes en Residence, 1987-1991, Le Centre CONCLUSION Copie-Art, Inc., Montreal (Quebec), Canada, The near wizardry of digital color 1992. p. 13 copiers and related computer tecnologies is reminiscent of the magical quality 4 Philippe Boissonnet, Copies Non Conformes, attributed to photography in its early years. op cit, pp.19-20 Debates will likely escalate as digital imaging becomes a global representation, 5 William J. Mitchell, The Reconfigured Eye: just as photography did in its first 150 Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era, The years. The ease-of-use and efficiency of MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1992, p. 8 digital copiers and technology contradicts traditional controls of artistic ieplication 6 Ibid, p.27 anddistribution,andchallenges conventional concepts of 'value' in art. 7 Margot Lovejoy, Postmodern Currents: Art and Artists in the Age of Electronic Media, Image form, meaning, use, and Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1992, p.110 value will essentially change.Digital imagingofferspotentialfor new 8 Ibid, p. 111 constructs, both visual and conceptual ... and will permanently transform the visual 9 Mitchell, op cit, p.7 arts. 10 Lovejoy, op cit, p. 115

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