Munsonarts
Technology is Art | Art is Technology
The Greek word for craftsmanship, craft or art is technê.
ART & TECHNOLOGY
Etching and Monoprint
Etching
Etching like woodcut and linocut is a reductive process. You draw into the ‘ground’ (drawing through one substrate to reveal another) or apply a masking agent followed by an acid or mordant that bites into the plate. Then you push the ink into the grooves and pits creating the image. The magic of etching is in the planning and additonal planning and then letting it all go. The acids and mordants will do as they will. So much depends upon the moisture in the air and the static in the room; the smallest of factors can alter the practice beyond your planning. In etching, one often hears the phrase: Today is a good day to bite! Yet, to some extent, one is left at the whim of the print deities. Practice and testing as well as consistency of method are the keys to successful image reproduction. The techniques are both old and new. Much of the etching that you see on munsonarts.com is achieved with non-toxic solutions. I use a thin film that is applied to the plate that is then processed with a positive image and then soaked in a bath of salts and then reprocessed. There are many other non-toxic methods that I have used with copper plate etching. One such process uses ferric chloride. The plate is covered in simple floor wax instead of the traditional ‘hard ground,’ whic is a mixture of beeswax, naphtha, rosin and bitumen (asphaltum).
Monotype
Monotype or monoprint are processes with similarity but which are distinct. Monoprint is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface – such as plastic sheets or plates. The image is then transferred onto paper using a printing press. In Monotype, a matrix is used such as an etching or collagraph that is then wiped, painted or inked differently with each subsequent printing. Monoprint is where you paint or roll ink directly onto the substrate. I like the monoprint method because it has the feel of a quick sketch. It is about moving fast and creating a quick painting which, under pressure, will be changed and altered in unexpected ways. One has to ask oneself during this process: Will the smoothness of the plastic be transferred? or Is there enough paint to show a brush stroke? Monoprints can be constructed in a reverse process such as sign painting on glass. A stroke can be buried and come out in an opposite form. Inks will mix in unexpected ways. It is, as always, the unexpected that produces the most interesting results.
LITHOGRAPHY
Lithography (from Ancient Greek λίθος, lithos, meaning "stone" and γράφειν, graphein, "to write") is a method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. This type of stone printing is achieved through the use of lithographic limestone or a metal plate with a smooth surface. Lithography was invented in 1796 by German playwright and actor Alois Senefelder (1771-1834) as a cheap method for publishing theatrical works. Thus, lithography was for many years a chief agent of image reproduction and information dissemination. I first did a bit of lithography as an undergraduate art student but really dove into it working with Adele Henderson in my master’s degree program in Visual Studies. I found that the simplicity of the direct drawing method and the science behind the etching of the stone and printing really worked for me. I enjoyed the preparation of stones. Grinding off the old image and preparing for the new one to be etched into the stone was very peaceful; it was something I could lose myself in. After many days of this meditative work to prepare a stone, I was finally ready to start drawing. Each mark was the final mark. This meant that each time I put crayon or brush to the stone, it had to be with purpose and resolve. There is no easy out with stone lithography. About seven years ago, I spent a summer in New Mexico at the Tamarind Institute. Working with Bill Lagattuta, Rodney Hamon and an international cohort of artists, we honed and perfected our lithographic techniques and methods. Working there and earning a certificate in aluminium lithography allowed me to gain an appreciation for the role of the master printer who works with an artist to mutually produce an aesthetic product. I found that the role of the Master Printer was very much like the role of the Systems Administrator: Build test --> Build test --> Release. Then you start over: Build Test --> Test Again --> Rebuild --> Rerelease. There is a pattern to the work of administering systems that also allows room for new discoveries and happy accidents. In printmaking, a smudge may feel as if it ruins the drawing but in the etch process, that smudge might transform into something wonderful. As a SysAdmin, I spend a large portion of my time researching a technology in order to test it before deploying it. Often I find the ‘recommended specification’ does not fit my use case, so I have to fight, struggle and test until I find just the right mixture of recommendation and innovation. Building out a Hadoop cluster for the first time is a messy case of figuring out who is talking to whom and on what port and where things go and how things should be set up versus how they really need to be constructed and then reconfigured in order to get the best performance out of the system. But one then sees through the technology and it becomes a simple matter of orchestration. Through testing, destroying and blowing up servers, one sees patterns of good and bad practice. I see the same thing when I teach lithography. I take all of my experience and condense it into little bitesize data packets and then stream them to the students in a way that they can autodiscover the process with intermittent success and failure. This allows them to learn from their experiences through error and achievement.
Technology
Systems
Systems Administration is my occupational hazard. Since putting together my first computers back in the 1980s and early 1990s when ‘online’ consisted of the BBS community (bulletin board system), I became a moon propelled into the orbit of sysadmin. We had a dedicated line for the BBS that my older brother ran out of the house. I was more interested in putting things together than I was in actually using them. When I did use the computer, it was all about graphics. Even my first jobs were about the construction rather than the use: vectoring bitmaps, redrawing and cleaning up artwork, cutting vinyl graphics and making signs and graphic design. When I first stumbled into the IT department and found a desk there, it wasn't because I had a CS degree or background in computer science (although I did know how to build computers, source parts, fix issues, etc..). It was because I could take any problem that was put in front of me and reverse engineer it and then put it back together in a way that made better sense than before. Starting with the office desktops then moving to domain forests and exchange servers, the department moved me up the food chain until I went from project manager to senior systems administrator with a great team of people at a global BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) managing the mail and remote systems of networks and building out datacenter cages full of blinking lights. A side effect of working in BPO through the first dot-com bubble from 1997 – 2004 was that all of it was multilayered. Our first customers at the firm were all startups. I worked with a lot of companies that blew up and went away fast and some that stayed around. I was given an incredible amount of access and accountability and this forced me to learn a great deal on my own rather quickly. Up to this point I had fallen into several jobs: The owner of the Graphic Design company for whom I had worked in the early 90s had a heart attack and left me alone to run the company for nine months. The store did not burn down and we made money. Later, in a funny turn of events, I became the executive chef at a restaurant, followed by a stint as a sous chef and then dessert chef at another restaurant. I somehow started working for a pharmaceutical ‘startup.’ All of this had given me experience managing people and information systems on a small local level - working with local vendors and local businesses. The second thing it gave me was a great deal of access to the day-to-day business operations. Early on I was tasked with a lot of responsibility and during those moments, I began to see the similarities between the different types of work. The IT work was a natural fit. Information Technology was about looking at a system, and making it work better with the resources at hand. The day-to-day operations of a BPO firm were something else entirely. It gave me insight to global and national labor arbitrage. After the bubble burst, I was only the employee left in the company’s San Francisco office and even then, I outsourced myself (I did mention it was an outsourcing firm, right?). It was my job to do so. We had over 1000 people working for us outside of the country and would use the H1B Visa System to rotate people in and out for training and work. I was witness to financial negotiations with global telecommunications companies and global vendors. I was introduced to customs law and international resource negotiation. I was working with people who may have lived in one place but worked in another and freely traveled across the globe, dealing with funds that managed close to a trillion dollars. I saw firsthand the formation of the Transnational Capitalist Class that Dr. Leslie Sklair of the London School of Economics was theorizing. Towards the end of my tenure at the BPO, we had more SVPs and Executives in the United States than we had tech worker bees like me. At the turn of the 21st century, while working as a sysadmin, I was exposed to a global system of interconnectedness that demonstrated to me how spaces were both regulated and unregulated and how that kind of behavior was made possible. But this role in a global corporation, gave me the insight and access that sent me back to art school where I could define and then refine my questions about what was going on in the larger conversation about global capital. In graduate school, I equipped myself with the the tools to conduct research on the matter and express my beliefs through intense course work, broad reading in the ideologies behind capitalism and the utilization of aesthetic forms to visualize the hidden data of that same class formation.
Digital Arts
Graphic Design
Do you remember font catalogs? They were these giant book of fonts that you would pour over to choose the Letraset type font, or, in my case, the Gerber font card that you would actually put into a vinyl graphics plotter machine. I was a teenager when I started sitting down with clients and taking their words such as ‘I want it to feel like...’ or ‘I want it to convey that...’ and then make those wishes into a logo or a sign for the window of the business or find a creative way to use light and tone to catch the eye of the passerby. I would remind them of visual conventions: how the eye moves and ‘reads’ objects, shapes and colors. How some colors relate calm and some make us uneasy. This is visual linguistics, or the semiotics of design. It is about how good design ‘just works.’ It’s not enough just to know Photoshop, Illustrator or Indesign and use them all the time. Before switching to Systems Administration, I briefly worked at a sign company that gave me complete autonomy when I first moved to San Francisco. The most interesting array of clients would come in and and give me the most unusual of work. Thanks to that work and practice, I am quick on my feet and willing to throw whatever I have into the pot. This ranges from making a doghouse reminiscent of a Mondrian that is lighted from the inside on translucent plexiglass for the display window at Macy’s to giant signs over bars and restaurants such as The Odeon, Fuse and many others.
The Webs
When I got to graduate school, I immediately asked the same question to everyone: Do you have a website? I asked because I knew that graduate students entering the market, were mostly younger than I and had not witnessed the great turn of events in American business. I knew that they would have to own their own identities and negotiate their labor exchange value. No matter where they located themselves, the web would give them open access to global markets. A website would give them the ability to publicly lay claim to their work and not toil in obscurity waiting for the gatekeepers in the gallery system to call on them. This global marketplace that was self-negotiated had the opportunity to become the great equalizer. I gave resources and access to anyone that asked me as I had been given them. Those that could pay did so and those that couldn't would send me artwork. I felt it to be a fair and equitable exchange. In the process, I learned more and more about websites. I had been familiar with IIS, ASP and had some Visual Basic, HTML, CSS among other systsems but suddenly I was hacking at PHP, HTML5, Javascript and frameworks such as Drupal and Wordpress. I found myself stumbling down the rabbithole into Apache, Nginx, uWSGI and Django, basically anything that had to be learned to make things happen.
Art & Theory
While making the internets go and websites hum, I also have a mess of Critical Theory running around my brain. Although I had learned a large amount about globalization while working in outsourcing, I had read only a handful of books on irrational exuberance, commodities, commodification, monetization and theories of state and individual relations. While working on my MFA at the University at Buffalo, I took informative classes with Steve Kurtz of the Critical Art Ensemble where I read and discused class theory and semiotics and really dove into the theoretical concepts behind the world in which I had worked. I found a framework to craft a visual language to discuss what interested me intellectually. The visual language support came from Jeff Sherven and Adele Henderson and, of course, the person that brought me into all of this was Mia Brownell who said to me, “You should go to Buffalo and hang out with Adele.” This was why I went to grad school in the first place. So all of this writing on munsonarts.com is indeed the fault of an artist.
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