Homework #7 (1.): Scanner Artists/Artists who use Scanners

Maggie Taylor

Maggie Taylor is an artist who uses scanners (and photoshop) to make her highly surreal/fantastical imagery. She collects objects, tin types, various flora, etc, scans them, and then combines them via layers in photoshop until they have been taking completely out of context into her own world. Many of these images recollect notions of memory and nostalgia, despite how fantastical they are and futuristic in their layering. Much of it maybe has to do with the antiquarian photographs she uses that give her photos that "old" look, making it seem out of sync with how highly digital her works are. However, I think it's interesting how she appropriate her found images and objects to the point where they are unrecognizable beyond their purpose in her images themselves. They also create narratives that interweave and interrupt our ideas of what happens usually in these photographs - reminding us of childhood stories, etc.

Leanne Eisen is an artist based in Toronto, ON. She created these artworks using a flatbed scanner, experiementing with different surfaces - these were made with the surfaces of CDs and DVDs, "introducing the digital storage medium back into the scanning process." The surfaces create a reflection that then become an abstract shape and form against the stark blackness of her scanned images. I like how they remind me of flattened prints or abstract paintings, but are digital, reflected scans.The surface also gives the scan a strange sense of depth, and the light reflected gives it a very digital "technological" range of colors - how we imagine technology to look like in a way - in a physical sense.