sp190210 Why Martin’s 3D etching press is not enough

Martin Schneider’s design of a downloadable/upload-able deliverable assemble-able and functional etching press is a breakthrough for sure. Now teachers can have a model to work with, both as an exercise in 3D printing and, taken further, an enabler to make prints using the press.

https://openpressproject.com/

There is more to do, however, to make the design thoroughly effective for people – young and old. It needs a culture of interaction with other people. Printmaking has a unique character which other art forms do not have – social development.

Since its invention, when prints first became a faster, easier way to make one’s mark as a hand print on a stone wall of a cave underground or under an overhanging cliff, it opened human interaction on a massive scale.

The hand-made paintings adjacent to the hand prints in caves were no less important, but the prints hinted at mechanization. They were the first algorithms! The use of a stencil (the hand) or a relief printing method (the hand smeared with pigment) was, like an algorithm, a way to solve a problem. It worked uniformly across the spectrum of humans. It was an innovation.

Unlike the signature paintings of the caves and the famous signature of a Rembrandt, the print made a statement: I am. Anyone could do it. It was a mechanical invention and led eventually to the printing press. The rest is history.

Mechanization takes command, however, when the human interaction is not in the mix. For example, I think of this when I throw out junk mail sent to me. The sender is not a human, thinking, “Bill would like to see this – I’ll send it to him.” The sender is mechanization in a multitude of steps.

When my email includes invitations to sign up for a political movement or buy a new car, it is not human interaction. To me, it’s dehumanized, and fully mechanized media having taken command.

I liked the article in School Arts magazine about Martin’s press, and the teacher’s description of the way the kids made printing plates using 3D printing. But it is not enough because the prints go nowhere. They have no point in creating human interaction of the scale I hope for with my concept of Proximates.

In a more humanistic effort, the prints those kids make would be part of Proximates, registered in an Internet system like a social medium, each moment becoming part of a vast database of times-and-places when and where the prints were made.

I would like American kids to have a personal acquaintance with kids elsewhere and an idea about other kids’ situations – their needs and wants, their hopes for a better world and how their education is preparing them to take part in helping Earth’s human and other life sustainability.

That’s what I mean when I say Martin’s press can only go so far as a valuable teaching and learning experience. For my part I am searching for a cohort to help me achieve my goal of blending the printmaking experiences of people with connecting with other people on a human, enriching manner through time and space.

I want to make the climaxing moment that a print is made as the beginning of a human interaction and understanding all over the whole wide world web of humanity.