A model for the collaborative studio in the 21st Century: What it might be!

Hoskins, Stephen

Abstract

Chair of the panel 'A model for the collaborative studio in the 21st Century and the changing role of the Master Printer' Professor Stephen Hoskins will present a paper at IMPACT 7 International Multi-disciplinary Printmaking Conference, Monash University, Faculty of Art & Design, Melbourne, Australia.

Over the last five decades the collaborative print studio has been based around the four disciplines of Lithography, Etching, Relief Printing and Screenprint.
This panel sets out several models of practice in a new technological environment and the varying collaborative strategies.

Today's digital print studios have largely adopted the traditionally defined print studio practices and associated collaborative print workshop methods.
The most influential characteristic of the collaborative print process is the communication between artist and printer; where the printer transcribes the artists’ ideas and aspirations for the work. This is predominantly achieved through verbal communication and a common understanding of the making process.

David Adamson of Adamson Editions - a former traditional printmaker now working with digital print technology - cites his communicative success in collaborative digital printmaking as being part of his background in traditional techniques. "…I speak the same language as the artists, and they relate to this…" . Adamson’s collaborative strategy has produced an array of successful digitally-mediated prints with a formidable body of highly established artists.

The adoption of the earlier mechanical processes within digital technology has made the transition from one technology to another run more smoothly, but the rapid development of digital technology has created a cultural divide between the two currently existing generations: Those born before 1980, who have come to know the world through mechanical technology and those born after 1980 who know little of its origins and therefore have no allegiance to the physical, and therefore instantly embrace the medium's inherent non-object status.

This position leaves us to ponder whether printmaking will have less appeal to the concerns of emerging artists and what kind of facilitation strategy might be required by the digital master printer? If Adamson’s success lay in speaking the same language as the artist; what is the language of the digital native? Or is the language of 'making' universal?

Hoskins' paper questions what the model of a collaborative studio might be, what it might look like and how - by examples - it might be found in the future. To answer these questions it frames a number of contexts, which the model might be influenced by or positioned within. In this second decade of the 21st Century, I am fond of quoting the editor in chief of ‘wired’ magazine from an editorial article published in February 2010. (Anderson Chris, 2010)
‘Here’s the history of two decades in one sentence. If the past ten years have been about discovering post-institutional models on the web, then the next ten years will be about applying them to the real world’
How does this apply to the perceived role of the master printer? Which in itself begs three questions: Firstly, what is a master printer in a digital age? Secondly what constitutes a print for a master printer and artist to collaborate over? And, thirdly what does the term collaborative studio mean? The third question will be answered by a short historical overview of the collaborative studio, which allows me to gain insight into my first two questions and supply the context for my initial quote. This will be illustrated by examples of current collaboration undertaken by the Centre for Fine Print Research in order to answer the first and second questions.

• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2013
• Deposit Date: Feb 5, 2013
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 238-242
• Book Title: Intersections and Counterpoints: Proceedings of Impact 7, an International Multi-Disciplinary Printmaking Conference
• ISBN: 9781921867569
• Keywords: collaborative studio, print, application of post-institutional models, role of the master printer
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/936152
• Publisher URL: http://impact7.org.au/papers.html
• Related Public URLs: http://www.uwe.ac.uk/sca/research/cfpr/dissemination/conferences/impact.html
• Contract Date: Nov 15, 2016