Picture was copied from the Tampax tampons manual. It is one of the coloured drawings that are explaining usage of the bought product. In the original it consists of:
When these three layers are printed together the following picture emerges:
There are a number of ways to enlarge or reduce the format of the picture,
and each one of them generates consequences in the further forming of it.
The visible consequence arising from computer scanning is the decomposition
of the image that is manifested through it's falling apart into thousands
of pixels with a possibility of 16,7 million colours, comparing to combination
of three mentioned above.
Scanning of the picture could be described as a translation of it to the language
understood by computer. Through the process of scanning, the document is being
enlightened - similar to the process of photography, only this time, it isn't
chemical reaction that produces the picture - the image is created by the
electrical impulses that form electronic file in the computer memory. This
file consists of pixels (pixel ? picture element), the smallest unit of computer
screen. So, pixels are very small one-colour squares, whose number depends
on the resolution (number of pixels per square centimetres - pxs/cm), and
the resolution determines quality of the picture.
Picture becomes a number - consequence that isn't visible, but nevertheless,
had occurred by using the computer scanner. Every computer file is just a
long line of zeros and ones, and as the rest of them, picture also became
a code in a binary system.
If the Picture was printed again without any changes (format size, resolution...)
there wouldn't be any visible difference between the original and the copy.
But, if some of these elements are changed, the difference might occur in
a very radical way.
Original size of the Picture was 1.83 x 3.05 cm, (what became through the
scanning process - 866 x 1443 pxs, while the resolution was 472.41 pxs/cm
(2636,75 is the number of pixels in all)).
The picture was enlarged over a hundred times, to the size 200 x 333,33 cm
(300 x 500 pxs), and the resolution was reduced to 1,5 pxls/cm (150 000 is
the number of the pixels after the enlargement). Through this procedure pixels
became very visible (their size is 6,67 mm).
Decomposition of the sight is the consequence of the simultaneous enlargement
of the image and the reducing of its resolution.
Printing was the next step in the processing of the Picture. It was printed
on the Ink Jet plotter in the three parts horizontally divided (which is visible
in the final version of the Picture - oil on canvas, in the change of the
local colour tone and gamma).
The height of the Picture is 200 cm, and the height of the printed parts of
the Picture is 70 (x 2) and 60 cm. The width was supposed to be 333 cm, but
the highest value that used printer acknowledged was approximately 327 cm,
so the ends of the Picture (2,5 cm each) were cut off.
The part of the canvas was left unpainted due to this misfortune, and
this white margin functions as another sign of printing process that this
picture has gone through.
Oil on canvas is the last of the media used for realization of the Picture.
Printed material was set on the canvas, and the Picture was copied directly
from the print, square-by-square, line-by-line. Doing so, even the one who
paints becomes a media oneself, doing nothing but mechanically copying an
image that already exists like print. Gradually destroying the print, (when
a line of pixels was copied, it was cut off so that another line could be
copied) at the end, process of painting actually swallowed it, but it's still
present and visible on the Picture.
With this last step in producing of this work certain excess arose, which
can be perceived in the quantity of expended handwork - it never had to be
painted, it could exist in the media of print. Here, painting is an excess
that dialectically binds the scheme of the computer print (made out of pixels)
and the content of the picture (a manual) personifying it completely by its
characteristics as a media. Stroke of a brush and pixel, diametrically opposed
in their chronological historical media usage, first marked as completely
traditionalistic, and the second one as the most contemporary media, in this
case coexist together in a perfect equilibrium, they could not survive without
each other; at the same time they deconstruct and construct the picture. They
unite and separate two phenomena that are combined in picture - the content
(image) and the media (painting).
The content of the Picture, as a part of everyday life of the contemporary
woman (tampons as a mass consumer merchandise appeared for the first time
during the 30-ies of the 20th century), is accented with alternate horizontal
and vertical brush strokes, through which the process of overlapping of
the threads in weaving is being imitated as part of everyday life of the
women of the past.
Jelena Radic