Katinka Matson
Artist's Statement
New technologies equal new perceptions. We create tools and then mould ourselves through our use of them.
In 1975, when the inventor Ray Kurzweil created the CCD (or “Charge Coupled Device”) flatbed scanner, no one imagined that this device, with a pixel-sensor that moved slowly back and forth across the page, would bring into question our established notions about seeing, vision, and perspective.
For the past several years I have experimented with a non-photographic technique for creating images by utilizing input through the flatbed CCD scanner. No camera or lenses are used. The process involves scanning flowers and other natural objects on an open-top scanner from underneath the objects with a slo-moving sensor. This technique allows for unusual opportunities to explore new ideas involving light, time, and rhythm.
It is a radically new digital aesthetic involving both new hardware (the scanner and the inkjet printer), and software (Adobe Photoshop), that allows for a new naturalism fusing nature and technology.
Without the distortion of the lens, highly detailed resolution is uniform throughout the image, regardless of the size of the printable media. The lighting effects from the sliding sensor beneath the object, coupled with overhead effects involving lighting and movement, result in a 3-D-like imaging of intense sharpness and detail. Images created by scanning direct-to-CCD cut away layers, and go to a deeper place in us than our ordinary seeing and vision.
Katinka Matson
New York City
Biography
Katinka Matson
Born: New York, New York
Lives in New York, New York & Bethlehem, Connecticut
Education
BS, The New School, New York City
Website
Bibliography
“Spiders 2013”, included in Plant: Exploring the Botanical World, Phaidon Editors, Phaidon Press, Hardcover, forthcoming September 26, 2016
Xeni Jardin, “Untitled Flower Scan, Katinka Matson,” Boing Boing, January 2012
“Katinka Matson,” Plexus, 2007
“Flowering Newsletter”, Journal of Experimental Botany, Oxford Journals, November 2007
David Pescovitz, “Katinka Matson’s latest flower scan art”, Boing Boing March 2007
“Speechless,” AD Magazine, October 2005
Andrian Kreye, “SPIDER FLOWERS: Katinka Matson's Scanner Art Fascinates With Intensive Clarity, Feuilleton, Süddeusche Zeitung, August 2005
“Personal Journal — Time Off — Calendar,” The Wall Street Journal, November 2004
L. Gu, “PALAZZO ROSSO Photographic Exhibition of American Artist: The Flowers of Katinka Matson ‘grow’ in the computer” Il Secolo XIX, November 2004
Clelia Zanni, “Floral Wonders,” Collezioni , Spring-Summer 2005
October 2004 La Stampa
Haydn Shaughnessy, “Discovered in a digital universe; Irish Times, November 2004
“Fascinating cosmic numbers”, Panorama, October 2004
Annik Le Guerer, "Science Festival: Twelve days dedicated to the pleasures of knowledge and ingenuity" Il 24 Ore October 2004
Dan Dubno, "Katinka Matson’s Scanner Art," CBS News, May, 2003
George Dyson, William H. Calvin, Nicholas Humphrey, Colin Tudge: "On Scanner Photography, Edge (edge.org), February 24, 2003
Xeni Jardin, “Katinka Matson’s Scanner Photography” Boing Boing, December 2002
Paul Tough, "Scanner Photography" (“The Year In Ideas – 2002”) The New York Times Magazine, December 2002
“Flowers, Art Photography and the Scanner," Neural.it, "December, 2002
Kevin Kelly, "Flowers," katinkamatson.com, February 2002