BRUTAL

Ink on paper, cyanotype prints, 2018-2019

A sequence of plotter drawings and cyanotype prints, exploring some ideas about architecture and light. Recursions of simple geometric forms, rendered with the grainy texture of low-fidelity ray-tracing, produce a dreamlike brutalist cityscape.

I was interested in exploring the ideas from my brutal.exe bot a bit further, and looping them back into the physical world. I wrote a new version of the ray-tracer which outputs textured hatching lines. These are drawn onto paper, using a pen plotter, either in positive (black on white) or in negative (white on black).

In order to produce more satisfying negative images, and to reinforce the central themes, I also used cyanotype printing, an early photographic process best known for the manufacture of blueprints. The images are plotted in negative on transparent plates, and contact prints developed, using the sun as a light source.

Some of these pictures are for sale in my shop.