in conversation with Graham Coulter-Smith
Robyn Stacey produced her photographic series, All the Sounds of Fear, on the powerful Quantel graphic paintbox computer. Her source images, photographed from television and video, were scanned into the computer and placed in an electronic 'library'. Stacey accessed and manipulated this library of images in a variety of ways – creating, for example, graphic devices such as the oval information 'balloons' into which she placed images. Having created such an effect it is easy to duplicate and enlarge or reduce images, and to move them until an appropriate composition is achieved. Other effects include layering images so that a background image can show through a foreground image. Here Robyn Stacey discusses the themes that motivate her technological art practice.
Graham Coulter-Smith: What first brought you to use the computer?
Robyn Stacey: I wanted to work with more images. With my last series, Redline 7000, the most I could work with were three images in the enlarger, montaging them. I could only work that way with black and white, and then I had to hand paint them. My using the computer came about because I needed a tool that allowed me to work with more images, and in colour, in a more sophisticated way. So it wasn't a matter of thinking, 'I'll make some work on the computer'; it actually evolved because of what I wanted to do with photographs. I felt that I couldn't really achieve the colours that I wanted with hand colouring, it always looked nostalgic, and I didn't want that, I wanted to use the colour that people know from film and television.
Graham Coulter-Smith: I think you are right, that these works... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline