Post-processing
When I visit the Neue Nationalgalerie I always take a brief look at some of the expressionists paintings. Only this time I noticed a difference. It was a piece of Kandinsky, but not an original piece. In its place a black and white print was presented, with a blurry appearance, without its original surface, its original touch. I gazed at it, how could a copy of an authentic painting have such an enigmatic impact?
Interference
Authenticity creates an own aura, its own reason of existence. This can be expressed in multiple ways, both digital and physical. It has to do with the way we move in any pre-described space: from the way we walk, talk, behave, to the way we move our hand by putting a simple line on paper or scrolling the mouse on a screen. The imperfections that occur during this process make a work human. Its outcome should approach us. It should be very close to the final construct, but still every piece is completed with our own eyes, our own mind, our own history.
Presence
Most of the work I make does not exist, yet. It does not have a physical presence. A digital work, other than a materialistic one, is experienced within a framework of variable characteristics. A work could be seen on a phone, a monitor or even on a projection screen, brighter or darker, with better or worse colour-contrast, all depending on the abilities of the equipment.
As technology improves, also the quality of digital images improve: contrasts get deeper and colours get more striking. This is also true for print technology, the process through which the ink injects the paper in relation to the quality of the paper itself. It is dynamic within and static without. So a piece of art coming from the physical world, going through the digital world and ending up being physical again, will always differ in its appearance.In that sense it is genuinely never finished, it evolves with us, or decays upon us, this makes it human after all.