At first glance, the colorful works in Hannah Whitaker’s new show Live Agent, now up at M + B Gallery in Los Angeles, look like ’80s-era magazine collages. On further inspection, they also look like computer print-outs from the days of clip art and gem-tone web graphics.
In fact, they are photographs, inspired by an even earlier form of computing: the punched card. Even more analog is the way Whitaker creates them, through a complex layered exposure process using a camera that was around during the earliest days of photography.
The process is a purposefully circuitous route to the end result—and it adds layers of depth to the wildly patterned, cut-and-paste photographs that make up Whitaker’s show. The New York-based artist is known for photos that feel painterly and tactile and emphasize texture over content. Here, she experiments with hand-made film slides and a large-format 4×5 camera, producing photos that mix pop-art and early web aesthetic with electric color, Calder-esque geometric graphics, and Memphis-era eclecticism.
The prints are striking on first look, and only get better the more you know about them. Whitaker made the photos by first sketching out the collages she wanted to depict. She then cut shapes into sheets of film (large format cameras take film in sheets, rather than rolls) and inserted them into her old fashioned, accordion-like 4×5 camera during exposure. When the light comes through the cut-out shapes, they are imprinted onto the film; then Whitaker re-draws, re-cuts, and re-places the screen inside the camera until the layered effect of the photo is achieved. From this tedious, hand-made process, Whitaker draws a comparison to early automation and the punched card, popularized in the 1930s by IBM.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
