Wayfinding
A series of 1/1 NFT + physical works that evolved out of the 5 Points of Suspension (TELOS) and 5 Open Doors (PATHS) series. Each work begins with an image of an analog painting, goes through several digital processes, and is reified through hand painting and pen plotting with an HP 7475a pen plotter. A detailed description of the process is provided below. Each work is scanned and minted as an NFT; the physical painting is included in the sale of the NFT and shipped to the collector free of charge.
Wayfinding #1-5 were minted on exchange.art but the series has migrated to the ethereum blockchain, now minted on a custom Manifold contract and available on foundation.com.
The Process
The process begins with a photograph of a heavily gessoed wood panel. These panels are the beginning point of noumenal’s analog painting practice:
The next step involved digitally painting and altering the photograph:
Next the file is transferred to a new digital environment & the file is transformed through image tracing, each color of the digital painting turning into a different vectorized pattern:
The next step of the process involves moving through various computational and physical workflows involving the pen plotter – an HP 7475a produced in 1983 – and hand painting with gouache. The photo on the right below you can see all of the mark-making tools used in this piece: gouache, various Micron pens, and various Posca paint pens.
Each iteration involves modifying and optimizing an individual path layer for the plotter process, saving it as an .svg file, converting this into an .hpgl file (an antiquated and proprietary file format for the HP 7475a) via Python scripting, and then sending that file to the pen plotter using a serial port emulation tool over a hacked together USB-to-RS232 cable.
Moving through the layers involves swapping out the different mark-makers and attending to the physical-interactions of the paint and inks through the pen plotting process.
The result is an analog+digital painting created in collaboration with the pen plotter. Feel free to reach out via Twitter to find out more about the series: https://twitter.com/_noumenal
