ArCade-III - 3d Open International Exhibition of Electronic Prints

July 18 - 31, 2002 ArCade-III in Russia International An exhibition of Computer Generated Prints Visit this Web Page regarding fresh information concerning further ArCade - III shows in Russia ArCade III in Almaty, Kazahstan: September 15-22, 2002

Paul BROWN 'Desert Storm'

Cynthia Beth RUBIN 'la Synagogue de Bruxelles'

Naomi RIBNER 'Ghost town Passage II'

Dena SLOTHOWER 'Truth Table I'

Vladimir MARTYNOV 'Lexis A2'

Victor ACEVEDO 'Millennium Epicenter'

Arpita DASGUPTA 'I desperately wanted to pant...'

Yoshiyuki ABE 'Body 22'

Lena LESKOVA 'The Tracks of Runs & Aversions'

"ArCade III is the United Kingdom’s Third Open International Exhibition of Electronic Prints. It provides an opportunity to see a wide range of recent original, limited edition, artists’ prints, which at some stage in their production have involved the use of computers to generate and/or to manipulate their imagery. The exhibition was linked to the fourth CADE conference held at Glasgow School of Art 9 – 12 April 2001. This exhibition is to travel extensively throughout the UK and Russia, during 2001 & 2002. It includes work by selected and invited digital artist/printmakers from around the world: artists from nine countries, from New Zealand to Russia and from Slovakia to India. The work in the exhibition covers a vast spectrum of styles and an extensive range of printmaking processes. Many of the artists included have exhibited in major international exhibitions, such as that of SIGGRAPH, and many hold important academic posts in university fine art departments. It is significant that during the last decade a number of research centres have been established in Higher Education institutions to address the implications of the digital print. Important among these are the centres at Camberwell & Chelsea, Loughborough, the University of the West of England, and the Wales Institute, Cardiff. Artists working in these centres are represented in ArCade III. The following pages of artist space feature a sample of work by some of the artists who are participating in the exhibition. The exhibition was helped and supported by the Arts & Humanities Research Board and Apple Europe. It is now six years since I conceived of the original ArCade, and curated the first exhibition during CADE’95, at the University of Brighton. My initial intention behind the exhibition was to demonstrate, to academics and students in art and design, the opportunities which had developed of using new technology to create, on the one hand a new print medium, and on the other a hybrid link between both old and new technology. In the early 1990s, when I saw this as a potential, there was little evidence of shows or articles to which students could refer. ArCade I, the first International Exhibition of Electronic Fine Art Prints, the successive ArCades and GAMUT, were and are intended to address some of these issues. It has taken a while for computing to achieve this however. Although the most prominent platform was – and still is – the Apple Macintosh, the important work of refining and developing the output of computers is just beginning. In the early days, the quality of the printed output from a computer was haphazard. To transform the image on the computer screen into a tangible object, retaining or enhancing its richness of colour, detail and texture as a physical image has been extremely difficult. The lustrous light-formed image on the monitor has often borne little resemblance to the final A4 non-archival print output. At last we have affordable print technology available, which has helped to develop the digital process into a printmaking medium in its own right. It is also used in other hybrid forms, to create links with more traditional print processes, such as screenprinting, lithography and etching, where it is used either to generate ideas or to produce laser prints for photographic stencils. New colour print technology also enables artist-printmakers to make crucial decisions about the scale and underlying surface of their images. I hope that ArCade III demonstrates a shift from simple celebration of the digital process, and an introductory survey of the available spectrum of styles – represented in the first ArCade – to concentrate on technical and aesthetic progress within a discipline continuous with the traditions of printmaking. We hope to emphasise a distinction between computer graphics, an area of work which by its nature is readily reproducible and highly visible to the public, and the less frequently seen digitally-generated fine art print, which has presence, texture and status as a physical image." Curated by Sue Gollifer University of Brighton & the London Institute, UK and by Andrey Martynov LeVall Art Gallery, Novosibirsk (Russian side)