Preparing for Pecha Kucha

I have been asked by Creative Stirling to take part in a Pecha Kucha event next month and it got me thinking about my working process.

Pecha Kucha is a Japanese style happening started in 2003 and now franchised worldwide which allow artists, designers and makers to show their work in an informal atmosphere.

It follows a simple but very rigid structure: you show 20 slides and talk for 20 seconds about each one.

This is designed to make you focus on what is essential.

And it made me realise that so much of my work involves working with algorithms- 50 per cent my input and 50 per cent input from software.

Take todays blip pic. This started life as a photograph of a rose I had grown in my patio.

Once inside the computer it morphed into a digital painting of a fictitious landscape.

There is a problem with this kind of work though. Folk are resistant to buying it.
One potential buyer said to me:” I would buy it if it was an original.”

But there is no such thing as “original” once its digital. You simply press a button and get as many copies as you like.
Of course you can construct some artificial claim to a “limited edition” but that is very dubious and as far as I am concerned fraudulent territory.

As for giclee prints, nothing more than a fancy name for high quality photo-copying on expensive paper.

You may disagree…