untitled

Camille Utterback

2023

Medium: monotype

Dimensions: 11” x 15” / framed: 14-3/4" x 18-1/2"

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Description: This series of four untitled monotypes depicts cracks in a sidewalk filtered through both digital and analog processes. My goal with these experiments is to embrace computational tools, while undermining the fantasy of digital images and information that are endlessly and perfectly reproducible, will never decay, fail, or be entangled with the world outside themselves. As I generate these prints, algorithmic simplifications and “errors” are introduced, and temporal and physical processes (and my lack of expertise as a printmaker!) impinge upon a perfect reproduction. My hope is that these images evoke a kind of humility and presence contrary to the hermeneutic slickness that is the default result of digital processes fundamentally designed to suppress “noise”. The iterative steps I use to create each print are: • photograph failure points in a concrete sidewalk • run the image pixels from the photographs through an edge-detection algorithm to simplify the edges of the cracks into a series of x,y points (vector lines) • trace these lines with a laser cutter, burning paper to create a positive and negative stencil • place the stencils on inked acrylic plates and run these in multiple passes through a traditional etching press – improvising the colors and placement of the stencils with each layer • include “ghost” prints as some layers – this process of reprinting a plate a second time creates darkened outlines of the stencils from residual ink left on the plate • re-run the edge-detection algorithm on the photographs at different resolutions, to create more simplified or “degraded” outlines of the cracks • print new layers with the different resolution stencils • continue to thin my ink until it “falls apart” leaving blotchy, imperfect areas of color that remind me of the deteriorating concrete