The Drawing Center fax show: ET exhibits

Scroll down for ET exhibits at the fax show.

The initial invite provoked memories of curly, chemically, odd-color faxes. But a few weeks later came this from João Ribas, curator:

“The fax machine model is Canon Pixma MX850. It has a resolution of up to 9600 x 2400 color dpi and 600 x 600 black-and-white dpi. We can receive color if you send your fax from a machine with color capabilities. Our machine uses standard 8.5 x 11 inch letter paper.”

Wow. But it must be pricey, I thought. Only $240 it turns out. Such high-resolution color prompted some color FAX tests.

The first two images (our originals) show an image from Envisioning Information, later redone for the Cognitive Art series of fine art prints. The black and white grounds (shirts are identical in both faxes) reveal color effects of brightening, color mixing, and so on:

During the last year, for the show at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, I’ve been experimenting with a Rothko-like structure moving through varous palettes. It appears that some of Rothko-beauty derives from structural format (color fields with subtle and ragged margins, and from saturation and value, rather than hue–because the beautiful Rothko character persists over all kinds of hue changes. My test Rothkos are printed out very large, but the FAX can only show very small versions, here collected together:

Here below is Porta the (real) Dog interacting with Porta the (sculpture) Dog, from our threads Dog sculpture and Porta and the Birds (at 300 fames/second. Porta, as her name hints, is a Portuguese Water Dog and arrived here about a year ago and happens to look like the Obama’s dog. Four months ago we welcomed Porta’s brother (same parents, not littermates) Ace, who has not yet appeared on this board. Porta is exceptional, as those who saw Porta apparently run full tilt backwards in her debut movie. There are now a bunch of Porta sculpture pieces for the Aldrich show, including a 12 foot high Porta.

But what does this have to do with the FAX show?
If artists can’t put their own dogs and dog sculptures in their own shows, what has the world come to?


Finally, a comparative resolution test: one FAX vs. 2,000 PowerPoint slides,
a play on Ad Reinhardt’s remark “If a picture isn’t worth a thousand words,
the hell with it.” The image shows sparklines from Beautiful Evidence.

Shown above are our 5 originals. Below, the resulting FAX to FAX transmission as received and printed by The Drawing Center FAX machine.