Artifacts

In a new series of screenprints, Dana Tosic investigates possibilities of capturing the human body in motion using one reprographic technology (3D scan) to capture a moment in time, executed in another (screen print). The images depicted portray glimpses of quotidian activities and gestures captured using a continuous 360-degree, 3D scan of a single motion. The resulting images reveal bodies in a liminal state – neither in their original position, nor having completed their transformation into another, they are caught between moments, revealing a three-dimensional, virtual trace of the activity.

The images reference early experiments in chrono‐photography by tracking the time elapsed and the change in the body’s position, weight, and direction that occur while engaged in a particular activity over a given length of time. Similar to the effect of a rolling shutter, the simultaneous movement of the scanner and of the body result in unexpected and unintended distortions. Created through an attempt to capture the passage of time through space, the resulting digital artifacts are lent sculptural form. 3D scans represent the latest, most advanced phase of reprographic technology – photography and printmaking, too, form part of this history. Notions of materiality and embodiment become particularly important when considered in relation to the use of digital technology, as does the role of chance and its creative possibilities for the artist.

Artist’s Biography

Dana is a Toronto based artist who works in printmaking, installation and digital media. She holds a BFA from Queen’s University and an MFA from the University of Calgary, where she was selected to participate in the Tim Mara Graduate Student Exchange in the Printmaking Department at the Royal College of Art, London, U.K. Her research interests include embodied perception and memory, as well as the application of digital technology to traditional practices in printmaking. She has participated in exhibitions and artist residencies across Canada and internationally, and presented her research on the applications of digital technology to printmaking at the Printopolis International Symposium on Printmaking in Toronto (2010). Her artwork is available through Open Studio’s Print Sales Gallery and the Art Rental & Sales Gallery at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and has been most recently published in Printmaking Off the Beaten Track by Richard Noyce (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013).