Research threads

What are the strengths of digital
and print media?

As a graphic designer trained in the 1980s, I experienced the cusp of communication design from print (largely analog process) to digital media. Even before the advent of digital media, I was interested in how print can be made interactive.

Often called to design print publications and then recast the same content for the Web, I inevitably had to compare and sort out the advantages of each media. Because of my historical attachment to print, I started to examine ways in which print could vie with digital media in terms of interactivity. My explorations have also considered scale, tactility, resolution, immediacy and accessibility.

Beginning with a life-sized paper doll/self-portrait and matching life-sized webpage, I've explored some of these isues in three projects.

Next, a paper clock with mechanical movement illustrating several texts ticks on in hyperspace in an animated digital version of the same clock.

Most recently a set of paper dolls led to electronic counterparts, encouraging viewers to reflect about gender, colonialism and misogyny privately on the Web.

Though not peer-reviewed, I continue to make other kinds of images that cross the manual/digital divide. Digital photography, digital painting, paint applied to digital underpainting and purely analog outdoor landscape painting continue to inform other aspects of my creative activity.