New Media Dictionary: Part V: Copy Art

The New Media Dictionary project [1] was born out of the desire to name and define the many and varied forms of art that have developed in conjunction with technology. A whole lexicon is being created to describe the many processes, techniques, instruments, and critical and aesthetic concepts—in short, the entire emerging culture—of this immense laboratory workshop.

The terms selected for this issue come from the field of Copy Art. The terms and definitions have been chosen by the Groupe de recherche en arts médiatiques (GRAM).

Interested artists and researchers are invited to submit additions and comments to Section Editor Louise Poissant [2]. These contributions will be added to the electronic version of the dictionary, with credit to the author. In this way, the New Media Dictionary will gradually become a collective project, in which each significant contribution will find its place.

These definitions were prepared by Philippe Boissonnet. Project director: Louise Poissant. Translator: Lou Nelson.

Dictionary Terms—Part V: Copy Art

Acetate—

a transparent, cellulose-based thermoplastic medium on which black-and-white or color text and images can be reproduced. Acetates must be matched with the type of copier used in order for them to withstand the heat from the pigment-fixing system. Because they are transparent, acetates are often used to create overlay effects and arrangements that the artist then copies or uses in the final artwork. Artists also use acetates for projection, for example by cutting them to 35mm slide format.

Activator—

a liquid photographic developer in photocopiers that use paper treated with silver salts.

Analog Copier—

a copier that makes reproductions using a photographic optical reader. Analog copiers may be electrostatic, thermographic or photographic. All copiers were analog until digital models appeared in 1980.

Bichromy—

two-color copies printed by two passes of colored toner powder. In general, works are produced either by means of a monochrome copier into which color cartridges are inserted (in such cases, the same sheet is overprinted by passing it through the machine twice), or by selecting only two colors on a three- or four-color-process copier. However, two colors are more typically used with monochrome copiers, which permit overprinting.

Body Copy Art—

any artistic activity derived from body art and copy art, including performances enacted on or with copiers, as well as prints and copy-art works that involve images of the body pressed directly onto the machine's scanning glass without the use of photographs. The body must be copied in sections. The copier's limited depth of field and the pressure of the body against the scanning glass result in distorted and out-of-focus images of the body, similar to prints or tracings.

Bubble Art—

a term derived from Ink Bubble Jet, meaning copy art created using a color ink-jet copier. James Durand christened his works Bubble Art in February 1991, after his first session at the Canon Champs-Élysées Centre in Paris. The artist worked with the technical features of the machine (printing time, length of paper roll, separation of the printing surface into bands by the optical reader, light, pure colors, etc.) to create abstract color artworks during performances. He worked mainly with Canon BJ A1 copiers.

Bug—

(1) a malfunction that affects the normal operation of a computer or its software; (2) a design error that must be fixed to make a program operational. The term bug is attributed to information-systems pioneer Grace Hopper, who, while trying to figure out why a system was not working, found a moth wedged between two relay contacts.

Camecopier—

a duplicating tool that is a hybrid of a copier and digital camera or videograph that can print, almost in real time, whatever the optical reader records. The camecopier is quite different from traditional 2D copiers, which have a depth of field similar to that of a photograph. The first camecopier, CopyCam, was marketed by Chinon in 1989. Other models followed, for example Da Vinci, by the Japanese firm Kim Jim, and Infocopy, by Kindermann of Germany.

Canon BJ A1copier—

a color ink-jet electronic copier made by Canon. It can handle very large formats (59...