Pigment, light, paper, screen; formats as interacting multi-dimensional creative works

Abstract

Formats have an interacting range of qualities that practice based research can explore, so testing and questioning theory; they are more than dimensions. Video art can play with space, light and sound, through a choice of materials, including visuals and audio. I make video art out of the virtual world of Second Life with its interplay of two-dimensional textures and three-dimensional objects. Editing this virtual world digital video with digitised archive film, contemporary music and literature explores how the formats used by multiple creators across time can interact, so exploring meanings through reinterpretation and translation. Taking still images from that video art into printmaking using photogravure etching, a hand-crafted method of mechanically pressing ink on paper, considers the translation of light on screen to ink on paper, and explores format from another position. Going from moving image to still images changes the relationship with time and distance, and from ratios in pixels to dimensions in millimetres.

Keywords

• format
• video art
• printmaking
• visual
• audio
• practice led