Abstract:
This thesis examines the changing nature of painting within the context of digital
technologies. I argue that digital technology has become hardwired into painting
production and dissemination, and that this constitutes a new and developing set of
existential conditions ‒ a new ‘framework’ ‒ for the practice of painting. This
development, ‘painting in a digital context’, is distinct from 'post-internet painting' in
that it addresses digital technologies as tools of painting production and dissemination,
rather than singularly focussing on painting mediated through the internet. I argue that
contemporary painting’s relationship to digital technology is analogous to Modernist
painting’s catalytic interaction with industrial technology; much as photography
sparked an inventive phase in painting in the early twentieth century, digital
technologies are driving fresh innovation in painting in the twenty-first century.
A character of this emerging framework is polyvocality; diverse voices and
approaches to painting are in effect. This, I argue, has created a situation in which
textual responses and theoretical reasoning are ripe for innovative formulation. In
accordance with this, I have constructed a propositional model for painting discourse,
which employs fictocritical writing strategies as a method. This text interweaves its
analytical content (which is focussed on the concerns and background influences of
contemporary painting) with a speculative fiction narrative that touches themes of
cosmological creation and destruction, simulation, war, technology, and climate
change. This presents a broad contextual framework for the conditions of painting as practised today, augmenting my argument that the new terrain of painting is
multivalent, polyvocal, and subjective.
The creative component of this thesis makes use of conventional painting
methods (brush, support, pigment) along with digital processes and techniques to
generate a hybrid or composite form of painting-based artwork. Principally, I have used
a computer numerical controlled (CNC) router to engrave aluminium plates to use as
painting supports. This approach sees digital technology embedded in the material of
the painting substrate as well as the painted image. By way of this hybrid formulation,
I have sought to develop a new configuration within painting that responds to the
shifting parameters brought about by digital technology.