A Form Rut
In this work I regard the flatbed scanner as a kind of clunky digital camera that takes photographs one sliver at a time over the course of several minutes. Up until now I had been using the flatbed scanner in a conventional way scanning documents or objects. I was trying find way of conveying time through scanner and it seemed motion was a good way to measure time. During a pass, I take the source material and turn it by hand in a number of choreographed patterns and moves. Those moves are combined with pauses that are counted out loud or in time with music, which also exists as time. With each movement and pause the image is sliced from different angles and in varying sizes, each landing haphazardly on the last. The inner workings of the scanner are revealed in the red, green and blue streaks that appear when the object is moved in front of the scanner head. Despite the fact that this scanner is an instrument of reproduction built for stillness, it can convey time and motion in a way that’s particular to its mechanics. The result is a visual anagram reminiscent of a collage but made from a single pass or “exposure” of the scanner. For source material I started using something that represented temporality which was Artforum magazine (from which I derive this project’s anagrammed name) that comes about every month. So when the magazine showed up I would work in this project.
