The Negligent Eye The Negligent Eye Curated by Jo Stockham 8 March – 15 June 2014, the Bluecoat, Liverpool Russell A. Kirsch: The first digital image made on a computer in 1957 showing researcher Kirsch’s baby son. Courtesy of NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), USA. A detail of this image is also reproduced on the cover of this publication. 2 / 3 The Negligent Eye Introduction The Eye of the Scanner Bryan Biggs & Sara-Jayne Parsons Chantal Faust This publication accompanies the exhibition the human thumbprint – literally a digital One of the most prominent works in The The publication’s content comprises a text by Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and There is one word in the English language requires immediate proximity in order to be on this blinding orb, ‘a certain madness is of the same name, curated by Jo Stockham, print – in the form of the ‘signature’ of wood Negligent Eye is Maurice Carlin’s beautiful Chantal Faust that perceptively introduces the there was light. And God saw that the light that is used to describe three very different able to see. The closer the subject is to this implied’.4 It is not that it is impossible to gaze Head of Printmaking at the Royal College of engraver Thomas Bewick who was born in large-scale print, Endless Pageless, screen ‘eye of the scanner’, relating this to our own was good; and God separated the light ways of seeing. A scan is a close examination, recording device, the greater the clarity of the at the sun, or at the beam of a scanner, but Art, and developed in collaboration with the the 18th century. Far from being a display of printed directly from the textured floor surface vision and our relationship, stretching back to from the darkness. God called the light a slow and repeated sweep of the eye and image. In the ideal non-space of this flatland, when we do it is often painful, it distorts our Bluecoat. The exhibition’s aim was to reflect uniformly flat art works as one might expect of the Bluecoat’s Vide, a tall public space at the the dawn of time, to light and how we perceive Day, and the darkness he called Night. also the hasty glance of a quick skim. These nothing shall come between that which looks vision and we are warned against sun gazing the ways in which artists use scanning from an exhibition related to scanning, the entrance to the gallery. Added to periodically and translate the world. Jo’s essay sets out And there was evening and there was actions are markedly different, but they all and that which is being seen. for fear of causing damage to our vulnerable technology in their work, particularly in the installation of works has a surprisingly by the artist working ‘live’ in the space over the concepts that shaped her ideas for The morning, the first day.1 perform the same function: an eye is searching eye organs. Bataille interpreted this as an erotic area of printmaking. animated feel. Unlike much ‘computer art’, the course of the exhibition, the print is hoisted Negligent Eye. And the final section consists of for something. The slow careful focus that Cameras need light to see. In 1859 Charles impulse entailing the lure of the forbidden. the works escape the constraints of the up the wall a few centimetres each day like the words of the exhibiting artists themselves, Three important things happen in the opening absorbs every detail, the staccato pan across Baudelaire wrote of the ‘extraordinary We know that we should not look, which is The idea for The Negligent Eye developed screen from which they originated, while an unfolding scroll, whilst at the same time who were invited a few weeks into the verse of Genesis. The first is the establishment a horizon and the bounce of an eyeball as it fanaticism’ of early photographers, disdainfully exactly what spurs the desire to look harder... from Jo’s research interest into how the scan several works – by Conroy / Sanderson, being scanned electronically. The work is exhibition to respond to a set of questions of an omnipotent being that creates everything skips across words on a page are all forms referring to them as ‘sun-worshippers’.2 and again. is both a close reading and a glance, and her Marilène Oliver and London Fieldworks in emblematic of one of the exhibition’s key from us about scanning in relation to their work. out of nothingness. The second is the affirmation of reading the surface of the visible. Slow, A scanning device comes equipped with its interest in artists’ increasing exploration of particular – are unashamedly sculptural. Some strands in that it sets up a conversation of light as being good, thereby implying that sideways or barely there, behind each own in-built light source: its ‘sun’ is artificial Human eyes tolerate neither sun, coitus, this apparent contradiction through the rapidly work on an intimate scale. Others explore between an analogue and a digital process, We would like to thank Jo, Chantal and all the darkness is bad and the necessary separation method of observation is the one purpose: and illuminates upon each scan. As with the cadavers, nor obscurity, but with different developing scanning and other digital the virtue of the digital glitch. And all display revealing scanning’s capability to embody artists who participated in the exhibition and of the two states of light and its absence. The detection. For the scanner who reads the sun, it is advisable not to stare into the scanner’s reactions.5 processes at their disposal. We are witnessing a materiality that makes for a diverse and different forms of translation. responded so enthusiastically to our questions. third significant gesture in the opening of this perceptible world, meaning accumulates beam. In Phenomenology of Perception, a time when scanning has become so much contrasting exhibition, with no two works Collectively their ideas and descriptions of story is found in the ‘callings’: a process of with each shift of the gaze. Thought and Maurice Merleau-Ponty describes the act Scanning is a blind process. This is in contrast a part of everyday life, habitual to the point indistinguishable from one another. None of us knew how Maurice’s piece would processes, both conceptual and practical, naming on the basis of appearance that works vision are here combined. of staring into an intense source of light as to the camera-based photography that Walter where we no longer notice it, and an exhibition reveal itself in the space, and with half the present a fascinating snapshot of the creative to affirm the existence of that which has being ‘a passive vision’: Benjamin identified in The Work of Art in the that threw light on artists who were, or had With The Negligent Eye being on for a lengthy exhibition still to run at the time of writing, possibilities that are being explored by artists acquired a name. This confirmation of being As with the scanning eye, the image scanner Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936) as previously been, experimenting with the period, it was felt that, instead of producing a we do not know its final outcome. In a similar at this exhilarating yet precipitous time, as via language was also recognised by the operates by translating visual data into ... with no gaze specifically directed, as in freeing ‘the hands of the most important possibilities of the scan therefore seemed conventional catalogue to be ready for the way we wanted to develop a publication that we waver between dread of a digital dystopia ancient Greeks whose word for ‘word’ was information that is then saved to memory. the case of a dazzling light, which does not artistic functions which henceforth devolved timely. We felt it was particularly important start of the exhibition, a publication exploring allowed a reflection of the exhibition over time, and the emancipatory promise of the digital logos, inferring both knowledge and reality. Beneath the lid of a flatbed scanner a rectangular unfold an objective space before us, and only upon the eye looking into a lens’.6 The that the exhibition in some way connected its scanning in relation to contemporary art practice and that could respond more immediately to the that Russell Kirsch’s first photographic scan glass stage defines the parameters of vision. in which the light ceases to be light and hand that operates the scanning machine artists’ practices to wider concerns about the would be more valuable if produced once the questions that the exhibition’s configuration, of his son’s expectant face nearly 60 years Whatever is in proximity to this pane will be becomes something painful which invades supplants the regime of the ocular. It touches proliferation of digital media and technology show was open. This would allow us to reflect and the broader environment of digital scanning, ago so hauntingly symbolises. visible to the one-eyed head staring up from our eye itself.3 in order to see and in doing so, captures a in our lives. on the exhibition and to perhaps give a sense posed. This more fluid approach was facilitated the other side of the window. Travelling along vision invisible to the human eye. In the case of the dialogue between the works that we by our designer Mike Carney, who brought Bryan Biggs is Artistic Director and Sara-Jayne a vertical axis, this scanner’s prosthetic eye In his brief essay from 1930 titled Rotten Sun, of scanned self-portraiture, the eye is doubly Though the exhibition’s focus is on printmaking, anticipated would happen once they were in fresh ideas about content, layout, flow of Parsons is Exhibitions Curator at the Bluecoat.