Riso + inkjet

00c14e11fee48383d727bc3464589a98 ac60cece9d898531b2887e5a8fc08503 ca6de96a661b88b4742a6e7ff8fac548 ea5f2302f81ca7ca1b0958ee4123d7c2

The Risograph printing process can be best described as an occupant of the middle ground between the capabilities of offset lithographic printing, digital printing, photocopying and screen-printing. Traditionally used in schools, churches, small enterprises and independent political parties, the Risograph has now become an alternative method of production due to an increased interest in self-publishing, and its ability to produce high quality prints quickly and inexpensively using colours not achievable by traditional digital printers.

The technology of a Risograph is very similar to screen-printing, using a stencil-based printing process. This method allows the Risograph to produce spot colours and textures similar to screen-printing but at a much quicker rate and a fraction of the cost.

from Push—Press, Singapore-based risograph press

So here’s a brief description of how the risograph printing works. It is similar to screen-printing, and to print a work with risograph, it is necessary to separate the color layers in the document. The machine will then print each color separately. Because of this, it is also possible to do overprinting, which means that different colors can be printed on the same area on the paper, which can result in some fascinating outcomes. This aspect of risograph printing also means that it is possible for some misalignment to take place. Taking these things into consideration, I think the results could be quite interesting and unexpected, similar to what I was saying about making chance art and incorporating these technicalities as the process+outcome.

Apart from risograph, I am also likely to print the rest of my work with inkjet. Can’t print all of it with riso anyway cos I ain’t got money… Also because I can do it at home, and maybe see how I can manipulate and play around with my printer. Not sure if I want to approach a press to do offset-printing because I hear from seniors it’s a pain. DIY all the way.

Video Double — virtual nostalgia

My video double is a work in progress of an alter ago. This lady is pretty much my ideal self, I think, as an artist, as a personality. She’s got some fun tattoos and beautiful hair. The illustration style is largely inspired by the aesthetics of Palace Doll avatars (from Palace Chat, briefly discussed in Media & performance class last semester), as well as Microsoft Paint. These are some things that influence my early artworks made on the computer, so I wanted to capture a bit of what I remembered and loved, like going crazy with the colour wheel and adding all the colours on my digital palette. Palace Doll avatars were really some stellar pixel artwork. And Microsoft Paint was my virtual art studio before I ever got to play with Photoshop.

Risograph references

 

I bought some of these beautiful zines printed with risograph over the summer as well. I have been quite interested in this printing technique for some time, although I have not personally tried printing my own work with it. Over the last year I have been trying to collect some good examples of risograph works and learning more about the process.  My aim for this semester is to print a section of my work with risograph.

Why am I interested in this technique? Last semester I made some glitch art. They didn’t look very good when they are printed with the laser printer. I’m trying to find out ways that I can bring the “virtual to print”, and I think overprinting with risograph using such bright and neon colours, could help achieve this effect.

Below are some examples of overprinting with risograph.

From the work Aqua Solo by Double D‘s.

Photo 16-8-15 2 05 42 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 05 49 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 05 54 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 05 57 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 06 08 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 06 15 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 06 23 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 06 34 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 06 47 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 06 55 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 07 06 pm

Unmatter by Dominic KestertonPhoto 16-8-15 2 07 44 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 07 49 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 07 58 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 08 05 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 08 10 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 08 14 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 08 18 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 08 32 pm

 

What is a Grid?

 

Photo 16-8-15 2 08 52 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 09 00 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 09 03 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 09 15 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 09 19 pm Photo 16-8-15 2 09 22 pm

Holycrap: Renn Lim by Renn Lim

 

“Renn Lim by Renn Lim” is yet another one of Holycrap’s creative ventures. I really like how this little book is put together, it reminds me so much of my own journals and how I save little scraps of paper and other ephemera that I love a lot.

What I love about Holycrap’s design approach is that they have a very distinctive and original style. They work with what their large archive of material and make an aesthetic out of it. It is absolutely okay to be messy, or when things get stained. From the viewpoint of a book lover and a creative, I think that sometimes it is important to embrace some of the imperfections and make it a part of design. This book is an example of how elements of art, craft, and design can come together and complement each other perfectly, and make the experience of going through the book so pleasant. Books are meant to come in contact with our touch, dog-eared pages and stains are inevitable. Books should feel at home in our hands.

 

Photo 16-8-15 11 44 44 am

Photo 16-8-15 11 44 48 am Photo 16-8-15 11 45 03 am

 

Paper bits that are scanned, printed, and deliberately crumpled by hand.Photo 16-8-15 11 45 09 am Photo 16-8-15 11 45 19 am Photo 16-8-15 11 45 24 am Photo 16-8-15 11 45 30 am Photo 16-8-15 11 46 37 am

Super adorable and amazing replica of the envelopes from photo shops. I laid an actual one next to it for comparison. It even folds up like the real thing. Inside the envelopes are small prints of Renn’s paintings.Photo 16-8-15 11 46 44 am Photo 16-8-15 11 46 55 am Photo 16-8-15 11 47 15 am Photo 16-8-15 11 47 21 am Photo 16-8-15 11 47 53 am Photo 16-8-15 11 47 54 am Photo 16-8-15 11 47 56 am

on pixels

ttttremix1 ttttremix2 ttttremix3 ttttremix4 ttttremix5 ttttremix6 ttttremix7 ttttremix8An ongoing series of collage made for the dictionary project.

My work revolves around picking up the trash and debris that is feelings, and rework them into something that’s worthwhile. A presentable melancholy, an accessible darkness.  It’s time to pick them apart and give them a new lease of life. Melancholia and it’s friends are like glitches. Remixes, edits and filters rework these glitches and help assimilate them into normality.

glitches.remixes.edits.filters

As a large part of my work derives from my participation in the virtual, digital space, I’m also looking at glitch art, and digital manipulation as ways of presenting my content. A glitch is defined as a “a short-lived fault in a system and often used to describe a transient fault that corrects itself, and is therefore difficult to troubleshoot.”. I’m treating this definition in a metaphorical manner in relation to the process of blogging and writing in journals. These accounts are my way of dealing with negativity and issues, and eventually they exist as evidence that indeed, “this too shall past”.

To quote Franz Kakfa “One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer and which in a general way are naturally believed, surmised, and admitted by you, but which you’ll unconsciously deny when it comes to the point of gaining hope or peace from such an admission. In the diary you find proof that in situations which today would seem unbearable, you lived, looked around and wrote down observations, that this right hand moved then as it does today, when we may be wiser because we are able to look back upon our former condition, and for that very reason have got to admit the courage of our earlier striving in which we persisted even in sheer ignorance.”

Hence, I’d like to think of the issues I’ve blogged about as glitches, as transcient matters.

Digital manipulation had been a constant method of my art-making. In these series of collages, I’m combining real collages scanned from my physical journals, and reworking them digitally to create more layers of symbols and images. The addition of  the planets, for example, is an allusion to early Internet art, part lo-fi, part ephemera. I’ve also distorted certain parts of the images and increased the colour information drastically, creating highly saturated areas of colours. This produces a “glitched” effect and is also symbolic of the intensity and saturated nature of my journals and blog.

The whole process of digital manipulation in these collages began first with an image scanned from one of my journal.

Image (33)Image (50)

Again, these whole idea of collaging, remixing and applying “glitches” to these images is a way to re-present melancholy, a performative way of acknowledging the temporal nature of these issues, and above all, a kind of celebration.

I will be adding text to accompany these collages.

That’s all I have for now.

#wip

 

alexandra levasseur + automatism

alex1 ax2 ax3 ax4 ax5 ax6

+ visual vocabulary
paintings and drawings by Alexandra Levasseur

Great series of works by Alexandra Levasseur, I love the fragmented elements, obscured figures, scrawls and scribbles. These fragments and random doodle-like scrawls is reminiscent of the constant stream of thought. Shapes and lines form symbols that help to tell a story, to illustrate a memory. (i.e automatism)

automatism

Technique first used by Surrealist painters and poets to express the creative force of the unconscious in art.

In the 1920s the Surrealist poets André Breton, Paul Éluard, Robert Desnos, Louis Aragon, and Philippe Soupault tried writing in a hypnotic or trancelike state, recording their train of mental associations without censorship or attempts at formal exposition. These poets were influenced by Freudian psychoanalytic theory and believed that the symbols and images thus produced, though appearing strange or incongruous to the conscious mind, actually constituted a record of a person’s unconscious psychic forces and hence possessed an innate artistic significance.

(from britannica)