Paul Garvey

Analogue Relics - The Imprint of Making

Master of Design Communication Design Printmaking Materiality Analogue Mixed media Print design Experimental Material thinking

Projection of 16mm film experimentations shows fractured text from the novella ‘The Machine Stop’s set in the OCR-A typeface. The trestle tables showcase artefacts of experimentation and contextual fragments of writing. Image by Kayla Williams.

This research asks how analogue making might expose tensions within the abstract digital systems that people live with today. Through a process of media archaeology obsolete mediums and tools are reintroduced to contemporary design practice through transmediation, creating a digital analogue hybrid that extracts the new from the familiar.

This research uses nostalgia as a critical lens rather than something sentimental by reasserting material resistance, through methods involving 16mm film and ZipZap machines to provoke analogue instability; in doing so failure is reintroduced back into systems that seek perfection. These failures or ‘glitches’ suggests the materiality of media, helping to expose material traces often erased in digital production, revealing the hidden labour and invisible systems that underpin digital capitalism.

Fibre laser testing plate. This technique was used to recreate the printing plates that affix to the base of a ZipZap Machine. Image by Kayla Williams.

Dual colour 3D printed cards in PLA material, the white embossed details allow for manual imprinting via a ZipZap machine. Image by Kayla Williams.

ZipZap workstation inviting the audience to participate and create their own imprints, using 3D printed cards and carbon paper. Image by Paul Chapman.