For my communication design lecture I attended an assistant professor in printmaking nominee’s lecture. Unfortunately, in my notes if didn’t write down the name of the lecturer, assuming it would be less difficult to find than it proved to be. The lecture actually turned out to be more of a job interview; but he still showed us some very creative and thought-provoking works.
His body of work was quite varied, and though i was expecting it to be focused on the the use of print-making in communication design (the only way i understood it to be used), but it actually revolved around optical phenomenon (something I’ve always been fascinated by). By optical phenomenon, I don’t mean optical illusions per say; instead I’m referring to our brain’s way of actually ‘seeing’ the eye work. I actually seemed to learn more about physiology in this lecture than I did art. But that’s the point of good art, right? Broadening horizons.
He began by talking about printmaking. He talked about things like proofing, make ready and tare factor—printmaking specific terms that often get overlooked when judging a piece of printmaking art. He also began his lecture by talking about working backwards through history and how it bridges the gap between communication design and art.
The majority of his work however revolved around “entropic phenomenon”, which refers not so much your eyes playing tricks on you, but the brain actually seeing the working of the eye. The artist would study these phenomenon and replicate them using printmaking means. The phenomenon he explored were things like mandalic work, retinal viens, shearer’s phenomenon, and color blindness. When it came down to it, most of the works were nothing more than circles arranged in mathematic array on a large canvas; but each work was different, and it was so because each work represented a different phenomenon. Shearers phenomenon, I remember discovering while I was flying back from Las Vegas three years ago and being quite startled by. It is the eye’s ability to see white blood cells floating directly on top of the lens. It is only possible when looking at a very specific colored sky on a clear day. It was a relief to know there was nothing wrong with my eyes.
But as I said, the lecture actually turned out to be more of a job interview so the visiting professor spent much of his time talking about student works his philosophy on teaching. One of the high points of the lecture was actually the works of a student who worked in wood block prints. She did an animation of commuters crossing a crosswalk. The aesthetic of the woodblock print animation made the piece feel very archaic, because of the jumpy framerate, as we watch 20 people cross an intersection. It felt not only timeless, but place-less as well, like the intersection could be any intersection in any city in the world.
The lecture not only made me understand printmaking as an artform, but allowed me to appreciated the craft behind it. It seems to be very time consuming and delicate work.
