Future trends

An article in the Age recently focused on the artist David Hockney and his use of the IPad as a new tool for making art.  When fax technology first came about Hockney created works and sent them to his friends via fax now he is using his IPad as a sketch pad and emails the results to his friends.

The artist explained how he sketched and image and then zoomed out to make the ‘canvas’ larger and then drew and easel around the first image he zoomed out again and drew a room around the easel and explained that this capacity to zoom out was unlimited.

This poses the question what does the future hold? The advent of sound and moving image in ebooks suggests all sorts of possibilities for artists. Will artists increasingly use digital technology to make artists books and if they do, will they be books or just websites?

The advent of technology also encourages a return to craft to matter a home made aesthetic at one end of the spectrum with hand made cheaply photocopied and roughly hand cut collaged text and image seen in zines

To more sophisticated craft based works focusing on paper making book binding and printing techniques.

To the sculptural works of local artists such as with Nicholas johns who ‘alters’ books by cutting and folding.

If you haven’t been to Sticky yet try to get there soon as they may not be around much longer as there funding is currently in jeopardy. Sticky is a shopfront in Campbell arcade which is situated in the subway running between Degraves Street and flinders street station it can be found by descending the stairs on the city side of Flinders Street opposite the station between Swanston and Elizabeth Street.

Sticky sells zines of all shapes and sizes most are limited editions using photocopying or digital copying or printing as a means of production, some are drawn, others collaged and some of my favourites are tiny ‘books’ pictorial ‘books’ using old stamps.