Asama OG x Nezu Museum x Birgit Skiold

Protocol

Three visual allies cross space and time to meet for the first time at the Pacific Portal, 2013. Devastation Pacific, San Francisco, California, United States, Earth. At contact, self-identify as allies, murmur these are my people, make plans for a hybrid form.

COMBINE.

FUSE.

Set of four stone ensos with guilloche overlays, constructed via the lens of a slow walk through the Nezu Museum teahouse gardens, and committed to copper plates via direct gravure during Crown Point Press 2013 Summer Workshop.

Production Notes

Image Size
329 x 493mm (13 x 19 inches)

Plate Size
329 x 493mm (14 x 22 inches), .041in mirror polished copper plate

Finished Size
90mm borders x 4 sides means approximately 510 x 660mm (20 x 26in)

Plate 0: Zero
Scrap metal, found discard. Backside. Hand filed, uneven: “4eva.” Cancellation mark, “X,” top left of plate. Some Capp street sidewalk surfing scratches at two edges. Modified aquatint with surfer resin drops. Circle, brush, and drip spitbite.
Color: hottest pink || orange-y sepia || 20% prussian

1. Pink Actual: Charbonnel Solferino Violet (~70%), Charbonnel Rouge Rubis/Ruby “Heart Stealer” Red (~30%), Douglas and Sturges Luster Pigment Pearl White, Douglas and Stuges Bronzing Powder Silvertone, Faust transparent base 2:1
2. Orange Actual: Charbonnel Cardinal Red (~70%), Charbonnel Apricot Yellow, Douglas and Stuges Bronzing Powder Silvertone, Faust transparent base 2:1
3. Blue Actual: Charbonnel Prussian Blue, white (~70%), Faust transparent base 1:1

Plate 1: One
One of 4 stone ensos. Direct gravure. Inkscape vector image composition with photo image collage. Photo tinting in photoshop to 2010 curves. Linux higest-resolution-possible-config to Epson 3880 (F18 adair create/F14 chula print configuration). Phoenix Gravure Pigment Paper.
Color: Black, silver, rust.
Color Actual: Charbonnel Black, Faust transparent base 1:1 to less.

Plate 2: Two
One of 3 deboss plates. Deboss/Emboss plates inspired by Birgit Skiold’s “Zen Gardens.” Copper plate, 0.041in scrap metal, discard. Flowjet cutting via TechShop, and the kind help of various mechanical engineering SF Techshop-ians! See Flowjet WaterJet aces, aka, CNC401: CNC Waterjet Cutter SBU – Level 4.

Paper
Somerset Velvet Soft White 300g
HM-63 Mohachi 300g (22 x 30″)
MMN-106 Torinoko Black 235g (38 x 74″)
Unknown Hiromi Dark Natural Gampi

The Master Technician
Etching consigliere Ianne Kjorli.

Links
Some printed pieces. Some background on the layering and combinations.

Ambient

Supreme court strikes down Doma on historic day for gay rights in America
SOMM, the new “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”
Sans Soleil, Chris Marker
Royal Space Force/Wings of Honnêamise
Daft Punk, Duh
Lianne La Havas, No Room For Doubt
Joshua Redmond
Spring Breakers, crime art movie
Bling Ring, see above
Epic hating on pinterist
Mourning canceled shows that should have been on TNT, or made with animatronics.

Research Notes

Nezu Museum, Tokyo, Japan
Birgit Skiold, for those who don’t know Swedish pronunciation, Kathan Brown indicates this can be sounded out as “Beer-git Skee-old”
Blythe House Reading Room, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK. See the “Zen and the Art of Print: Birgit Skiold and Japan” show, and “Birgit Skiöld and the Print Workshop” for background on London’s first open-access print workshop.
Anish Kapoor, Untitled
Anish Kapoor, Untiled A

Passports for Louise

Set of five block compositions, using the six pirate passport plates developed previously. Each black block is one of the plates in the composition. The gray squares are cuts from the extra (blank) plate. The plan is to use them to make impressions, or maybe ink some of the edges, but use it more like a sculptural space like the Marioni and Cage prints. Or use the Manila blue gampi…

Rough drawing of the cuts on the plate:

Each of the squares is a plate impression, although I’ve not really used the biggest of them.

Then, the plates are arranged like so:

Paper is 60x97cm, Fabriano Rosaspina or Somerset. Ink is silver metallic + black to darken. All depending if impossible, of course….

Some food:

Louise Nevelson, The Dark Elipse, 1974

Louise Nevelson, Sky Garden, 1971

Pat Steir, Lama Ghost, 2006

 
Actual:

Fabriano Rosaspina, Hiromi Gray Gampi, Blank ink. 28 x 19 in.

Conceptual Forms, Conceptual Cocktails

Le Classique, 2010

Photogravure, black ink on Somerset paper with plate mark and tone. 13 x 19″ (329 x 483mm).  Composition includes crop marks for A6 fill-in-the-blanks invitation, located at center-top of the plate.

This invitation reads:

CONCEPTUAL COCKTAIL PARTY

Yes there will be booze.

Details Marked Below.

HOURS

12   11   10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

to

12   11   10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

LOCATION

——————————————

On the roof ____

With projection _____

C++

San Francisco, CA

USA

Also present in the composition, are registration lines and fades. As part of the registration, centered on the text for the invitation, is the following production metadata:

PRINT THIS FOR FREE ON WHATEVER PRINTER WHEREVER YOU WANT!

Ask me how. Email printer@gnu.org and cc bkoz@gnu.org.

Underneath this in very small type there appears to be a mis-print, or type overlay. It is repeated, with some overprints, and says:

Then tell me how you did it!

—–

This is the first part of what was assumed to be a triptych composed of three etchings, all the same size. These were done half-way through the July 2010 Photogravure workshop at Crown Point Press, and etched and printed later in the summer and early autumn by Emily York. The workshop instructor was Emily York, with Asa Muir-Harmony. Attendees were Benjamin De Kosnik, Chayo de Chavez, Jay Dee Dearness, and Carolyn Dodds.

The three etchings are: Le Classique, Conceptual Cocktail, and a yet-unfinished piece that I call List Form. Plus one idea for another form, called SHOUT! All these engravings are arranged somehow on a wall, and also some kind of archival media that contains all the digital files used in the production of the plates is either attached to the back of the prints or otherwise incorporated into the display. In the summer of 2010, the archive consisted of a data DVD with outlines in Inkscape SVG files and TIFF files for photos, along with detailed system documentation for a linux print production workstation.  I did some cool drips on the DVDs with metallic ink to signify that they were ART, not DATA. That was what was attempted, at least. Now this part would probably be a folder on Dropbox and some links.

This is how I’d been looking at it for most of last year:

Le Classique, 2010

Conceptual Cocktail, 2010

List Form Plans, 2010

SHOUT! Idea, 2011

Production files for the third conceptual form, List Form, exist but have not yet been printed. This is in collaboration with Tomiyoshi Tsukada and is photogravure, guilloche, scanner-art with a three-layer silver overlay of text and fades.

There was another version of these prints conceptualized. It involved engraving a version of this with kif ink, presenting said version to John Gilmore in collaboration with Roland McGrath, and getting invited to James Turrell‘s Roden Crater. I’d like to think this version is still in development, but is admittedly a long shot.

—

These prints are very dear to me. But have largely defied any coherent explanation. Below is my latest attempt. Hopefully the passing of time has made it easier to explain what I was going for here.

—

This project is an investigation into printing forms and methodologies.

For the form experiments, I thought of printed matter, and tried to categorize them into distinct types or forms.

The first two etchings, Le Classique and Conceptual Cocktail, are examples of one of the most endearing and essential forms of printed communication, the invitation. This invitation is to an imaginary party. The third etching, List Form, is an example of another classic form of printed communication, the list. Grocery lists, to-do-lists, etc. The forth etching, SHOUT!, is an example of protest communication, the classic form for getting attention.

For the methodology experiments, I was trying to get at the essence of printed matter through the centuries, and the specialized knowledge and tools necessary to produce fine works on paper. Often, this knowledge is lost. Exact descriptions of some of the early photographic processes are lost forever. Hot type, ditched. Film pre-press, gone. Distressingly, digital files used in the production of works less than ten years old can become obsolete and rendered useless by proprietary format, abandoned products, and the inability to transfer/convert to newer production methods.

Influenced by the production methodologies of the free software movement, (started by Richard Stallman trying to freely communicate with a printer), I created a reference platform for the archiving of print production, based on the free/open source linux operating system and applicable tools, transforming proprietary curves used in the production of photogravure with free intellectual property. And a documentation system for production notes. Then, I used these files to create a reference print. The final step was to then attempt to dethrone this canonized static object, by inviting other participating printers to use these files to create this or altered works, and send me a copy, with documentation on how they got the print so that I could incorporate any new techniques.

Chayo Chavez indicated that this is a way to explain the free-software movement to art people, using their terminology. I considered this a pleasant by-product of the experiment.

As such, I expect this project to be ever-unfinished. But always worthwhile.

As Shown

Conceptual Cocktail, as above but in a swank frame, will be shown as part of “Traces, Marks, Fragments” at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art (SLOMA) January 20th-February 26, 2012. This is a show juried by Sandow Birk.

Of Interest

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Conceptual Forms, as seen at Altalier Brancusi, Paris, 2006
Man Ray, Objet Mathematique, 1934-36
Edward Ruscha, Stains, 1971-75
Richard Stallman, The GNU Manifesto, 1985