[january 2020]

This is an overview of ongoing research and visual exploration on imagination and beauty surrounding technology. As my artistic practice develops so will my research and this research page. 

INTRODUCTION

Cognizant and Reawaken are two kinetic print installations that I have developed. Although both works print abstract prints on paper, they are first-place visualisations of my quest for imagination and beauty around technology.

My fascination for printing machines started during my study Illustration. I was looking for a way to reanimate the dull repetition of production. For this I made a first test called Printer 1.0; an analog print machine that could produce an endless pattern, as a tribute to tactile devices. Making an imprint played the main role in this work. My work then developed further, with the machine itself becoming more prominent. The print is no longer the target but confirms the machine.

The components of my current printing installations are inspired by mechanical and biological movement principles. I collect obsolete printers and various other electronic devices and disassemble them to study the different parts. With these autopsies I increase my knowledge and let myself be inspired. Technology and machines are often synonymous with utility and efficiency, but my research now focuses mainly on the beauty of the machine itself.

WHAT IS THE VALUE OF DOING THIS NOWADAYS? WHY IS THIS SO SPECIAL?

We form our own tools and are transformed by our own creations. On a daily basis we surround ourselves with old and new technology, and experience old technology as “natural”. Technology transforms our identity and is thus part of our human nature. As flowers and bees evolve together, humans develop in a symbiotic relationship with technology.

As a society we mindlessly use our everyday products. Our devices are more connected than ever and disconnected at the same time. We are rolling and scrolling without seeing something new. We are becoming one collective mind, the kind of mind that depends on screens for imagination. Marshall Mc Luhan published his book The Medium is the Message, decades ago. I look around and see mediums mirroring each other. A smartphone is a small tablet, a tablet is a small computer and a computer is a small television. Because we are so integrated with technology, I wonder how this affects our imagination.

WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO ACHIEVE?

Reinterpretation [lost] techniques, for the sake of beauty not utility, will generate new ideas of what could be. By creating these fictional printers I hope to combine the technological and the mystical. I want people to have a sense of wonder when they see my work.

[RESEARCH OVERVIEW]

1. FAILED TECHNOLOGY. 
Technology is a mirror for humanity. Besides creating beauty, technology is there mostly to fulfill our needs. Those needs have evolved on different locations through the ages, creating a wide range of tools which we still benefit from. Research into history will show how much of our inventions we’ve already forgotten because of time and location. There is not one past, there are multiple past which all gave rise to our present.

2. IMPACT DEVICE. 
How does the device impact what the user will produce? How does technology influence the imagined result? For example the Malling-Hansen Writing Ball where Nietsche was a fan of. One of Nietsche’s closest friends, writer and composer Heinrich Koselitz, noticed a change in the style of his writing.

Nietsche’s prose had become tighter more telegraphic. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” Koselitz wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, “my ‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.” “you are right,” Nietzsche replied. “Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.”