Seeing Touch: Haptics, Temporalities and Metamorphosis in the Woodburytype

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This doctorate will take the gelatine relief of the Woodburytype beyond its traditional use asphotographic reproduction method, exploiting its material and processual properties as an imprint to givegraphic expression to touch, time and human/object interactions.ObjectivesTo extend the methodology of Woodburytype printing to encompass large dimensions with increasedrelief depth, and to establish ways of stabilizing the large gelatine deposits, as well as exploring thecreative potential of going beyond thresholds of material control.To interrogate the aesthetic and conceptual nuances afforded by the relationship between surface andimage in the photographic, digital and direct versions of the Woodburytype. (Benjamin 2007, Marks2002)To produce work that collapses the distinction between optical and tactile knowledge, and toinvestigate the heuristic qualities this affords. (Nancy 2005, Deleuze and Guattarti 1997)To situate print methodologies in relation to contemporary fine art discourses of image criticality andimage recognition, demonstrating the tensions between touch, veracity, resemblance and illusion. (Didi-Huberman 1997, Trodd 2017)To make artworks that scrutinize traces of human inhabitation and our interactions with objects,evoking bodily and geological temporal narratives in the materiality of the artworks, and raising issues ofsustainability. (Harmen 2011, Bennett 2010)MethodologyThe doctoral project will use historical data for the Woodburytype, technical innovation, practice-basedresearch and theoretical studies in a mutually informing dialogue. As a fabricator for the technologyspecialist Factum Arte I have developed a hybridised woodbury method in which high resolution scan12 / 17data was CNC milled into plates. I have also started developing ways of taking 2.5D casts directly fromsurfaces of the world e.g. the eroded surface of a tabletop. Utilising the research into the Woodburytypeat the CFPR, and other historical records from archives this project will investigate how to expand thescale and the surface height of the images. Action research using the printroom as a laboratory will refinethe innovations through empirical recordings and material experimentation. These novel surfacemethodologies will be incorporated into practice enquiry, enabling a focused interrogation of theproposal's theoretical aims through individual artworks and installation contexts. Group exhibitions,workshop demonstrations and artist talks will generate dialogue with other practitioners and the public,facilitating critical reflection, and dissemination, of the emerging work.