Page 9 - Expanded Media & the MediaPlex

Expanded Media - and the MediaPlex 9/206 Coincident with the emergence of the art-science of photography is the modernisation of some archaic optical tools - drawing aids - like the camera obscura (pinhole camera), and the development of new tools like Wollaston’s Camera Lucida - a pocket-size prismatic device that artists could use to check the precision of their drawing. The idea of a personal aide to capture aspects of visual reality (starting with the humble pencil and paper) of course eventually resulted in the development of Kodak’s Brownie Box Camera (by 1900), the Leica and other 35mm cameras by the 1930s, digital camcorders like the Flip (2007) and of course the ubiquitous camera-equipped smart-phones that we use now. Projecting forward, we must assume that soon we will all have numerous minuscule wearable pin-head cameras, tracking and recording reality in 2d - and in 3d - and across the electromagnetic spectrum. Making coherent movies and other art-works with these kind of resources will be the challenge of the next few decades.
Utamaro Kitagawa: Laughing Tippler volume 3 1803 (portrait of Utamaro from the film Utamaro and His Five Women by Kenji Mizoguchi (1947).
Utamaro was an artist specialising in woodblock prints for the popular (mass) market, and further specialising in portraits and images of women, perhaps especially women engaged in the ‘floating world’ of the Tokyo pleasure districts - the tea-rooms, brothels, theatres and restaurants. This choice of subject matter resulted in this genre and period of woodblock prints (1760-1810) becoming known as Ukiyo-e (pictures of the floating world). The popular media of this time included the kabuki playbook (illustrated book accompanying a theatrical production), and the kiby shi (adult comic) as well as single standalone prints (yakusha-e) generally featuring portraits of famous actors and ‘celebrities’ of the floating world. The impact of these beautiful, and often sensationally erotic and pornographic, popular art prints on Western Europe when they began to arrive around the 1850s (they were often used as wrapping paper for delicate ceramics) was stunning - an alternative point of view - literally a different perspective on the world, made a huge impact on artists struggling with the impact of photography - see especially the work of James McNeill Whistler, and the illustrator Aubrey Beardsley.
Colour printing originated in 17th century China, where the art of wood-block printing had been practised since at least 1346 (the earliest two-colour woodblock print). The woodblock technique typically meant cutting a master block for the black elements of the print, then cutting separate blocks for overlay colours that were printed in precise register. This form reached its height in 17th century China. When they began to infiltrate into Europe in the mid-19th century, the Floating World colour prints - mostly reproduced on cheap paper - were perhaps the first multi-coloured popular graphic art in Europe - definitely a step-change from the hand-coloured bill-posts, Saint-cards, and Tarot/Playing cards (woodcuts and engravings) of previous times.