Paul Haydock-Wilson at digital surface

CASE STUDY

Case Study Submission, The Wilderness-Eroded Suite

My practice is concerned with representing and mapping landscapes that I have a psychosomatic connection with. A connection that comes through negotiating, recording, revisiting and interacting over time. It encompasses themes as diverse as geography, process, and identity.

On a basic level, I’m engaged in a search for transformation through artistic interaction with elemental processes. It can be read as an attempt to locate and exist within the ‘aesthetic moment’. It strives to get beyond the rootless condition of post-modernity and the unsustainability of global capitalism, but is inevitably tied to the pre-existing conditions of contemporary culture and it’s historical materialism.

I am engaged in a site-specific project involved fixing a series of etching plates, which varied in metal-type and preparation, to the bed of Deptford Creek at low tide. They have been left in situ for varying durations, recovered and finally the results were printed using traditional and contemporary technologies.

It is a geographical time-based experiment but has connotations of sacrificial rites. In fixing the plates firmly in place with copper wire, to an inaccessible and unproductive space it almost becomes a ritual act of sacrifice, but one that will be taken back at a later date. The physical act of going down into the creek, sinking into the lower depths, descending the broken ladder from the hulk of an old minesweeper becomes a somewhat romantic, or even anti-heroic act, as there is no obvious material gain.

After months, the weathering process and sacrifice of authorship is halted and the artifact reclaimed. The decision-making process of how to etch and print these plates has forced me to develop new ways of working. The first plate was deposited with rivulets of silt. The silt was baked on by the sun and slow etched in acid. Subsequent plates have been literally ‘creek-etched’. In order to retain the mud, rust, algae and other deposits and effects of subsequent plates, traditional intaglio techniques proved problematic. I experimented with embossing using wet paper. Mud and rust impregnate the paper but are unstable and flake off. So I turned to digital techniques.

The digital process I have been engaged in is largely a photographic one. Colour matching from screen to print was a frustrating process at the time that, therefore I worked in CMYK and bypassed RGB colour management tools. My aim was to faithfully represent the matrix of the plate without losing the essential elements of the process and, oxymoronically, the depth of the surface, by which I mean the topography. High resolution scanning enabled me to capture and then print what are essentially etchings in a way that was not possible before. In order to achieve the size of print that I had in mind, i.e. as big as possible without losing clarity, I engaged and embraced the concept of interpolation, where pixels are resampled and stretched to mimic their nearest neighbor. Although I scanned at a high resolution, it was necessary for some interpolation to take place, so that the finished print contained enough information as possible. This meant a slight softening of the final image, rather like a watercolour.

How far could I push the technology at my disposal? Basically an old Heidelberg A3 scanner, Photoshop, and an Epson 9800. Initially I was working on a semi-redundant operating system that was painfully slow whilst waiting for new scanner software from Germany. My digital files were nearly a gigabyte and I had to cover every milimetre of them cleaning up dust and scratches and replacing lost information, cloning, masking, and blurring. All these considerations came towards the end of the overall process, but early on and throughout the digital post-production. The size of the screen-printing beds and screens was also a factor. I had a new screen made that could cover the image surface.

The actual surface of the print is crucially important and was considered from an early stage. In order to create a faithful surface map I used a very heavily textured and thick fine art paper, with a watercolour finish. Although I was very pleased with the outcome there was something missing. I wanted to physically re-affect the digitally produced surface, to re-objectify, protect, and enhance what was already an enhanced surface. I did this by screen-printing a layer of thick, clear, oil-based varnish over the entire image surface, thereby re-submerging and re-invigorating, but also referring to the traditional varnishing of oil paintings. Colours became brighter and the surface texture acquired more depth. A watery sheen or film appeared, reflecting and absorbing light, depending on the position and angle of the viewer. The prints are seen as a suite, which covers a single wall space and immerses, and envelops the viewer, drawing one into the landscape. Hands reach out involuntarily to touch the surface and as the varnish protects them, it is possible to hang them without the added barrier of glass, so the interaction becomes physically as well as visually tactile.

Digital scanning and printing makes it possible to faithfully represent the visual qualities of the surface. It also opens up opportunities to resize, manipulate and distort. By enlarging the image, scale and perception shifts dramatically. The microscopic becomes macroscopic and it becomes possible to negotiate the landscape as a surface map. The local tactile and kinesthetic features of the surface which were previously invisible are now perceptually clear. It turns the viewer into explorers, roaming visually and creating their own cognitive trails. The concrete becomes abstract, without obvious visual clues of scale.

‘Scanning, searching for meaningful presences or significant absences from which to construe a ‘true’ impression. What the human mind brings to the process is the vast complexity of perception psychology.’  Brown (1999, p.12-13)

Paul Haydock-Wilson 2008

www.paulhaydockwilson.co.uk

This project would not have been possible without the assistance of Camberwell College staff and Camden MacDonald.