Croft, Paul

English

Article for a special project included in the Grapheion Year Book 2008 – entitled Memory of the Future edited by art critic and writer Richard Noyce. Article reflects upon the future of Printmaking in 2028 and examines the potential for the development of the interface between traditional and digital technology

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Aberystwyth UniversityIntegration over Interface: Printmaking 2028Croft, Paul; Noyce, Richard; Hoskova, SimeonaPublished in:GrapheionPublication date:2008Citation for published version (APA):Croft, P., Noyce, R. (Ed.), & Hoskova, S. (Ed.) (2008). Integration over Interface: Printmaking 2028: DevelopingStrategies for Digital Lithography. Grapheion, 2008(21), 76-77. http://www.grapheion.czGeneral rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the Aberystwyth Research Portal (the Institutional Repository) areretained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by thelegal requirements associated with these rights.            • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the Aberystwyth Research Portal for the purpose of private study orresearch.            • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain            • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the Aberystwyth Research PortalTake down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediatelyand investigate your claim.tel: +44 1970 62 2400email: is@aber.ac.ukDownload date: 09. Jul. 2020Alphabet G, Paul Croft, Lithograph printed from stone and photoplate incorporating computer generated tusche wash, 40 x 29 cm, 2008

Integration over Interface: Printmaking 2028:Developing Strategies for Digital Lithography

Aberystwyth UniversityIntegration over Interface: Printmaking 2028Croft, Paul; Noyce, Richard; Hoskova, SimeonaPublished in:GrapheionPublication date:2008Citation for published version (APA):Croft, P., Noyce, R. (Ed.), & Hoskova, S. (Ed.) (2008). Integration over Interface: Printmaking 2028: DevelopingStrategies for Digital Lithography. Grapheion, 2008(21), 76-77.General rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the Aberystwyth Research Portal (the Institutional Repository) areretained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by thelegal requirements associated with these rights.            • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the Aberystwyth Research Portal for the purpose of private study orresearch.            • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain            • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the Aberystwyth Research PortalTake down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediatelyand investigate your claim.tel: +44 1970 62 2400email: is@aber.ac.ukDownload date: 03. Oct. 2019A s I ponder what printmaking will be like in the year 2028, I’m slightly perturbed by the thought that by then, I’ll be sixty-five, undoubtedly retired, but hopefully still able enough to be graining and printing stones in my gar-ret – a supposition corroborated by the experience of at least two friends who are still printing well into their eighties.The subtext to this question may be the survival of traditional printmaking in the face of the digital revolution. Fifteen years ago I remember the very same being discussed with Rosemary Simmons – the then editor of Printmaking Today.1 At that time the economy was similarly diving into recession. The print market, which had been so buoyant and impossibly inflated a few years previously, had collapsed – the bubble had burst. Printmaking, seemingly under threat from the emergence of digital printing, the introduction of new stringent health and safety regulations and swingeing cuts in education was predicted by many to dis-appear. Certainly throughout the 1990s a great many workshops and college de-partments in the UK shrank or closed. Significantly investment was redirected in to computers and software, frequently updated and replaced at huge expense on an annual basis. Initially there was deep suspicion and at the same time great enthusiasm for digital printing. There was much talk of hybrid printmaking, research into the interface between digital and analogue, the combi-nation of processes and computer generat-ed images for screenprinting, etching and lithography. The premise for such activity was as much concerned with the justifica-tion and affirmation of digital prints – ink jet prints and laser prints as it was about the survival of conventional printmaking in a digital age.In 2008 it is reported that the Internet has come of age and that this year’s US Presidential race is as virtual as it is real. Digital printing, which encompasses both printmaking and photography, is now an independent art form in itself. And yet increasingly even this is being challenged as artists and students explore working online, developing interactive websites, blogs, film and animation. Saved to disc, broadcast online or projected, none of this material now requires to be printed at all: a paperless revolution indeed. Which of course is fine until a switch is flicked, a power cut occurs or the computer’s RAM is fried by lightning.In 1993 Rosemary Simmons confi-dently predicted that printmaking would survive, as interest in the skill and craft of traditional processes re-emerged. To a large extent this has proved to be the case, certainly in Aberystwyth where tra-ditional processes of etching, woodcut, wood engraving and lithography have remained popular. Those essential intrin-sic qualities of printmaking; that excite-ment of peeling-back a print from plate, block or stone; the kiss of ink on paper continues to captivate new generations of students and undoubtedly will ensure a flourishing future.By the same token the increasing so-phistication of computers and software has expanded the frontiers of printmak-ing, enabling the exchange of material from analogue to digital and back again. Graphics, film and animation packages present exciting opportunities for the printed mark to be scanned, manipu-lated, stretched and overworked, whilst state proofs are choreographed with sound and music. Cut-and-paste push-button technology quite obviously encourages alternative approaches to drawing, collage and pho-tomontage, but arguably such material is greatly enhanced through photomechani-cal processes of plate and screen printing. Somehow the printed mark ever so slightly embedded and embossed into the surface of the paper seems just that bit more vital, more visceral than the bland flatness of printed pixels. I have to confess, as a lithographer, to enjoying the physical activity and engage-ment of graining, rolling and printing im-ages from stones and plates. I like to get my hands dirty. Recently however I have become interested in using the computer again as a tool for developing separations for plates, printed in combination with stones. Based upon research completed at Tamarind in 19962 I have access to computer-generated tusche washes – of-ten exaggerated in scale and character, which when juxtaposed with conventional drawing creates curious tensions – as may be seen in the print Alphabet G (2008). A palette of customized drawing tools that mimics lithographic crayon and wash also presents interesting possibilities. The computer too can be used to colour proof images, thus theoretically saving time at the press.For me the future thus holds the possi-bility that digital imaging, drawing, paint-ing and collage can be fully integrated into studio practice. Not so much a hy-bridisation of printmaking – more a fully integrated approach that will enable me to develop images using crayons and brush-es as well as using the mouse; allowing for seamless transition from screen to plate to ink on paper. Currently the software that enables me to do work this way is actually relatively crude and the time and steps re-quired to develop and proof images digit-ally is remarkably tedious. It is quicker to do it all by hand. There is therefore oppor-tunity for very real collaboration between artists and the people who write software; a form of action research that will enable the development of programmes that are truly sensitive to the needs of printmakers. Integration over interface – the future for printmaking is optimistic indeed.Paul CroftArtist and Lecturer, Aberystwyth, Wales Notes:1 Informal discussion during a visit to Belfast (Northern Ireland) College of Art2 ‘Developing Customised Wash Palettes and Brush Tools to be used for the colour proofing of images using the Adobe Photoshop computer program.’ Paul Croft, research paper presented as part of the Tamarind Master Printer Training Program, 31st May 1996Integration over Interface: Printmaking 202876

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Integration over Interface: Printmaking 2028:Developing Strategies for Digital Lithography

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