How can artists use new technologies alongside traditional print processes as part of a contemporary practice?

My research topic centres around different reproductive technologies and their interactions, looking more specifically at how print-making can be employed to reappraise this subject. It is my intention within this project to challenge an established narrative in which newer technologies displace older ones, and to instead propose, through both the example of my own work and written reflection on the subject, a more complex series of circumstances in which hybrid forms are continually produced through interaction and amendments. To do so the fixity of opposing terms such as craft and digital technology themselves need re-examined, or least considered in relation to their respective merits.

By combining new digital techniques alongside more traditional processes, I wish to reflect on the ways in which new forms can be produced from their combination, layering and juxtaposition. A central part of this proposal is based around deepening my understanding of technical processes, and the ways in which these can be harnessed to support artistic creativity. Technical areas that I have identified as being of importance to this project include screen-printing, woodblock-printing, CNC routing, 3D Printing, digital printing and vacuum forming. This would involve the expansion of my knowledge relating to physical processes and the materials at my disposal, but also developing my fluency with CAD and 3D modelling software.

Looking beyond such materially-based methods of experimentation, I am also interested in articulating how these processes are located within broader discussions around technology and its role within society. Forming a contextual backdrop to our own considerations of this subject are contemporary anxieties around machines replacing human labour, as well as ongoing, ethical debates around the ecological impact of different types of production. As a result, there are several critical discourses which could be said to inform the topic, ranging from art history and design theory, to sociology and the historiography of computer science. Critical thinkers that I currently envisage having a direct impact on my attempts to conceptually frame the topic include Glenn Adamson, Walter Benjamin, Marie Hicks, Tim Ingold, Esther Leslie, Sadie Plant and Richard Sennet. Moving between these sources my intention would be to trace crucial changes to the hierarchical position of the reproduced copy, and the role skilled labour has up until this point played in producing it.

Previously, examples drawn from science fiction have provided another important prompt from which to consider the question of technology and its effects, constituting an imaginary space within which a series of anachronistic elements can be brought together as a holistic form. This is an influence that I would continue to draw upon, not least because it offers a method to overlay issues of gender, ecology and automation, which I feel are intimately linked to the topic. To do so, I will refer to notions of futurity as they are speculatively treated by such authors as Margaret Atwood, William Gibson, Pamela Zoline and Ursula le Guin.