Conversation between Paul Coldwell and Dan Hays,
Chelsea College of Art & Design,
16th Feb 2009.
Paul Coldwell Can we start this conversation by establishing when you first became involved in lenticular prints?
Dan Hays I was invited by the multiple Store, a London based publishing project around 1999 and their mission was to invite artists to engage with making multiples that used technologies not familiar to the artist. It took me quite a while to think of an idea but finally came round to the idea of 3D lenticular prints. I seem to recall that in the general public domain there was a flurry of these kinds of images made more available because of digital technology but the process goes back to the 1960’s.
PC It is interesting that through digital technology a lot of older technologies have been revisited.
DH That’s right. Previously lenticulars could really only be done on a large volume commercial scale, since they involved a number of industrial processes. I think it was Kodak that originally developed the process in the 60’s, producing thousands of lithographs, which were then laminated with the flat lens on top. It was impossible to do this at home or even in a small production company
PC But where you drawn to this process for the fact that it was a bit tacky, the results a bit Kitsch?
DH Absolutely. I think all children were amazed by these 3D illusions; they brought animation onto objects like rulers, and pens. It brought a sense of spectacle, even on such a small scale.
PC so you were attracted to the popular aspect of this technology?
DH That’s true, rather than the iconography that has tended to be associated with lenticulars. But my interest is also in that fact that it is used for spectacle. I remember Hamilton’s print in the early 70’s (Palindrome 1974 Lenticular acrylic laminated on collotype printed in 5 colours), which was a life size reflection of himself in the mirror, which was a really interesting engagement with the technology. Apart from this, there is little that I have discovered that was conceptually challenging. Although I do know artists used the 3d cameras, where you had your photos returned as 3d images.
PC There is something about this lenticular technology that is rather crude. It’s not that sophisticated. It’s like 3D movies, the audience had to put on their glasses, there was something of the fairground about the experience.
DH And of course you were distracted by having to wear the glasses! I think lenticulars are the only form of this 3D technology that requires the use of an apparatus or needs particular lighting, as with holograms. The down side, from one point of view, is its very poor rendering of 3 dimensions. There’s a very limited amount of depth that can be conveyed, the equivalent of just a few inches from the picture plane.
PC Can lenticulars generally only present about three stages of movement?
DH Actually this depends on the resolution of the print, but you are right, in the cheap popular examples its generally 3 views, but I have seen up to 24, in for example an image of horses running, so it has improved, although the rendering of a crisp image is always compromised. The more images in the animation, the more blurred it seems.
PC There’s a sacrifice then of sharpness for implied movement?
Dh Or 3D effect.
PC And this seems in keeping with why you are drawn to the pixalated image as a source for your paintings.
DH Yes, it’s about loss of information. My paintings have their source as jpeg compressed images. Like with impressionism, there is a relationship between overall effect and specific information. So with the lenticulars I’m combining compressed digital images and really accentuating that because of the limits of resolution of the lens. There is something perverse or ironic about producing 3D landscapes from material where it’s hardly discernable that they can be read as landscapes at all.
PC It’s ironic that the commercial print industry has its sights set on greater fidelity and resolution while you are drawn to the opposite end of the spectrum. The manner in which technology breaks up and reconstitutes reality, you make apparent in your paintings. You foreground the fact that the pixel is the basic building brick.
DH It’s the Newtonian idea of the world being an atomic model. In digital pictures, the pixel is the smallest element. But beyond that, and in reference to my lenticulars as well, my paintings are flawed, they are about the materiality of the paint, so even working pixel by pixel, the point is you see the brush work, you see the stuff which has an infinite resolution both tangible and incomprehensible. Painting is imperfect, flawed, whereas the pixel is an absolute. Hopefully this is where the tension occurs in my painting
PC It certainly creates a sense of anxiety. Your images tend to suggest an utopian vision, all be it a domestic utopia. The idea of the beautiful, taken from photographs from the internet not intended to be art, but with the intention of sharing the beauty in the world, if I understand that correctly?
DH They are about showing beauty but they are also about observing documentary evidence. They are in fact compressed video stills. I’m drawn to them not only for their low quality resolution but also in terms of low level composition, and that anxiety you observed might be attached to the sublime. I use web cam images, which are almost arbitrarily set up, just set up to record and relay information, not really about conveying beauty, the picturesque or composition.
PC Lets return back to the lenticular. The images you are working on come from these Internet images from Colorado, USA? Its interesting in terms of the context of these images, snow covered hillscapes, that we refer to TV interference as snow
DH That’s really important, snow between channels. Also because of the vertical division of the lens, they seem in the same class as images from the TV, especially when you photograph the lenticulars, they look just like images from the TV. Snow between channels or noise! These relate to paintings I did a while ago, of snow on pine trees, and when I got the photographs back they reminded me of images of snow or noise on the TV so I made that link visually but it took a while to act on it.
PC There’s a strong connection between what you are doing and the act of plein air painting where the artist paints the air or space between the artist and the subject matter. Obviously the impressionists revealed in the clarity of French light, but you bring an English sensibility, a greyness in the air, and it seems as if the subject matter is that space between you and what can be named.
DH I do talk about atmospherics and the closer you get to the image the less you can see or read which I suppose goes to a degree with all painting except tromp l’oeil. As you approach the canvas you become aware of the mark. But in my snow paintings as you get closer colour perception takes over, tonal perception retreats, it’s an exaggeration of what happens when you try to see how an image is made.
PC And your work also imposes a viewpoint or more particularly a viewing distance in order for the viewer to read the work. When I saw you last show, when I got too close the image collapses!
DH What interests me, with regards to the surface, it’s that point of recognition of the surface as a clue as to how the picture has been constructed, be it the dot matrix, the pixel or the brush mark.
PC So theres this engagement with the language of painting and perhaps a tension between whether you are an abstract painter painting figuratively or a figurative painter painting abstractly? This relates to the lenticular where there is both image and graphic interruption of that image.
DH How do you mean, interruption?
PC Well the original images as source for the lenticulars would be clear and sharp which is then broken up, fragmented by the lens, so a less distinct image hovers.
DH It does because they merge into each other and each eye sees a different image, so you are right, it’s not as in stereoscopic images where each eye sees a distinct image, the lenticular produces a blurred impression.
PC And this is compounded by the fact that the viewer is invariable moving.
DH In fact the images encourage the viewer to move.
PC Much of your work is about a discourse with the surface, what’s behind it, on top or in front?
DH Lenticulars are against the surface and the surface is the ridged lens. They are in fact small movies, 12-18 frames interlaced, it is a short animation. I’ve been testing how many frames I can combine, how much movement, and how many layers. I split a single image into 12 layers, 6 in front, six below, all moving, like stage flats. And I have to invent information, to fill in information when one layer crosses another…
In my snow images I’m animating the colours and it’s a mater of finding a point between the eyes reading the colour changes and reading the 3D illusion. From a distance lenticulars don’t look 3D but as you get closer the 3D effect becomes more apparent so as you approach the surface, the illusion of space opens out. But then getting too close and the whole illusion breaks down. The spell is broken.
What’s been so exciting about this project is to have the opportunity to work on this in the studio and have control at every stage and test out the limits within the studio, calibrating the printer and simply being able to experiment, which I have not been able to do before. The technology also reveals its limitations and I can then work up to that point where it begins to break down. And so therefore I’m working up to the edge of failure, which I hope also works metaphorically.
PC Thank you
