A Print Shop

Services Provided

Design work for print (pamplets, zines, posters) • Printing services (plain paper, cardstock, photo paper) • Photo print delivery service • Scanning services / Family archival work • Film scanning • Pro bono printing for organizations, events and individuals needing printing in service of liberation work

Currently Printing on an Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8550. Flatbed scanning on Epson V550, and 35mm Film scanning on Plustek OpticFilm 7500i.

Printers as a bridge for our relationship to technology

The mangled paper, the irritating screeches, the ever-draining ink, the failures and frustrations of a printer feel annoyingly common. How have we traveled to the moon, and yet a computer printer struggles with the seemingly simple task of printing a Word document?

But is the journey from digital to physical ever simple? Should it be? Could the frustrations at the slowness and inefficiencies in how a printer transfers pixels to ink, be a deeper frustration—an uncomfortable confrontation with the unresolved tensions in our mixed realities, where virtual and real blend?

Many entities, especially technology companies, want to stress the seamlessness, the ease and naturalness in which we progress to a technology-full future—one in which they own and profit in. Is there an alternative? Do we embrace, reject, or perhaps create something new—from something old.

So we study the printer, the machine that bridges the digital to the physical, the mechanism in which we find parallels, form connections, and manifest new versions.

How do printers work, printing worldwide and printing side-by-side

The printer as the big boss of office mainstays, thinking about the catharsis of the printer-destroying scene in Office Space. Where does this anger come from—the awareness that this production doesn't serve a more meaningful purpose, the inefficiencies magnifying the mundanity of the task at hand (as opposed to efficient mundanity, where the insufferable is made a bit more tolerable by the ease of the task). So perhaps the disdain is misplaced, printing could be so joyous and rewarding if the work is meaningful and purposeful.

We can take a look at the aesthetics and design of printers and printing. We can research the resurgence in popularity of the physicality of printing, thinking about the "coolness" of screen-printing, the possibilities of 3D printing, the trendiness of typewriters. This gravitation speaks to a yearning for tactile-ness, perhaps as a response to the above digital dissonance, but also a desire to localize and make transparent the printing.

Instead of the printing occurring in a black box, the process is understandable (usually via the manual process) and open. In addition, the relationship between the printer (the operator) and the printer (the device) is more intimate and aligned, i.e. pressing down on a key and seeing it mechanically move a stamp to a piece of paper has a more obvious synchronicity between the key-presser and the mechanical key than hitting ctrl + P and having a printer sputter out some sheets.

Copies versus originals

There is no copy without the original. Even if every brushstroke was mimicked to perfection, every line copied to the pixel, it can never replicate the original. A copy will never capture the magic, the moment—the uniqueness—of the very first. Or can it?

There is no original without the copy. What is an original that no one can access? What is the reverence of an original, but an acknowledgment of the impact of the many copies in circulation?

Copies and duplicates are opportunities to make art accessible, to bring about new dimensions to existing ideas, but they’re de-valued as a way for institutions and those in power to maintain a sense of tradition and legacy to uphold hierarchies, maintain elitist and expertise spaces, and continue capitalist endeavors in the arts.

Copyrights, patents, NFTs, they all operate on the premise that originality must be protected because it is valuable. What is presented as a way to protect creators, instead we see as a way in which corporations and other powerful entities control and limit creativity, funneling ideas into neat, boxed products and documents. The reality is that creativity is boundless, source of inspirations come from all directions. There is an abundance of creativity, instead of a few individual geniuses giving birth to novel ideas.

So we study the printer: a cold, mechanical tool—and sometimes obstacle—in the process of art-making, and see it for what it is. A vibrant conduit, an art of its own, an art of all—one that demonstrates with each copy, our collective interconnectedness.

On publishing

Through the framework of copies and duplications, thinking about how ideas and thoughts travel. The ways in which we copy and adapt the ideas we hear from dialogue and conversation. This too is complicated with the printing press, and mass media in general. With the ability to copy at scale, the dynamics of how thought is spread and understood changes.

There's also much to consider with how digital information is communicated, whether its Facebook and Twitter's role in recent political events to how memes define current cultural trends. The way this content is copied and shared and communicated, and how it is intertwined with power, requires examination. Connectedness without conscious thought being applied to it? (Thinking about how Facebook doesn't know the amount of data they are collecting.) Or connectedness with conscious application of exploitation? (Thinking about global capitalism.) Is there a more conscious copying?

Thinking about publishing, the creation and distribution, of these ideas almost always through copying illustrates some of these tensions and offer potential solutions. Publishers in their centralized form, wielding strict copyrights, impose a limited vision of what copies can offer. They own the printers, they get to control and dictate what gets distributed. All the beauty of copies is in the hands of the few to decide.

Zines offer one alternative. They "unlock" the potential of copies, leaning into their flexibility and potential for duplicity. Any printer can create a copy that's just as good as the "original". The distribution can spread in a grassroots model that doesn't involve a centralized decision-making process. Zines also offer many other appealing facets that more traditional magazines or books can't. They can be rapidly developed by a community due to its lower barrier of entry. They can come in many different formats and sizes, because they are not obligated to follow traditional models of capitalist distribution.

Printers are the site where we can examine the relationship we have with production. Questions of ownership, scale, and scope arise, and with it, questions about how things should be shared, how should things be made, who decides how it's made? Maybe we can create a world in which we would print a car.

The process of printing

If I drew a shape in Illustrator and then printed it out on a piece of paper, where does the creativity reside? Did it happen in the software of the computer; after all, that's where the lines were drawn, the colors shaded in, the curves measured? Or is it on the paper; that's the "completed" product, what will be presented? If someone asked for the shape, would you send the .ai file or a piece of paper?

It probably depends. Creativity resides in all aspects of the journey from idea to manifestation. But there is a particular part of the journey that is worth highlighting, the one that may be out of the artist's hands and in the mouth of the printer. The process between digital and physical is a fragile one, but it's this process that perhaps best encapsulates the aspect of creativity that's most fascinating. It's not the prepared digital designs, nor the finished paper, but the printing, as digital code signals the circuit and ink hits the paper, that best captures the beauty of art.

The essence of creativity does not reside in the blueprint (even if it serves as a starting point), nor in the finished product (even if this can be the most suitable form to share and display the creativity), but in the printing. (This is no doubt very complicated when printing is abstracted away from the artist and to the machine, as opposed to pen to paper or finger to instrument. And process is obviously fluid, one can say drawing a line in Illustrator is similarly the essence since the starting point is idea of line in the brain and end product is digital line on computer screen...but drawing a line in Illustrator is a printing, so still works!)

I also don't think it's a coincidence that this aspect is downplayed because it is powerful, and it is not easily packaged for capitalism. An .ai file can be sold and downloaded, a finished print can also be distributed and sold, but the process can not be packaged. (It can barely be defined or pinned down, as seen above!) Imagine if we learned that the joy of drawing might be drawing, instead of a finished painting. Imagine if we learned that it was more important to adapt healthy habits towards creating than forcing a schedule that maximizes production. However elusive it might be, we must continue to print the process.