RDP #98: JAS 17.4.16.17.03

2021 - NFT (NFT)

Jeffrey Alan Scudder

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Radical Digital Paintings is a collection of 239 works that were painted from 2016–2021; one exemplary image from the series is #98 . This painting was made after Scudder did the first ever Radical Digital Painting show, a hybrid performance/painting/lecture that brings together his painterly and pedagogical interests. In Scudder’s work, it is often difficult to pick apart what is a painterly effect versus an artefact of a lens-based or computational process. Similarly, in this work, images of physical materials exist alongside digital marks in a dynamic composition. The painting includes a selfie signature, which Scudder began to include around that time, and also features slogans that explicitly refer to his democratic interest in digital art: “making pictures is the best video game / make your own tools.” What we consider a digital painting often involves, on some level, the translation of human gesture to a digital substrate. Whether this happens through painting software or a machine learning process, what is recognized as digital painting often is created within a specific technological framework. Scudder’s digital painting process works within and against these constraints, involving the use of game controllers, found images, cameras and paper, custom-made digital brushes, and more. This results in unique and multi-layered compositions that transcend the 1:1 indexical relationship that most digital paintings have with the technical process that enabled them.

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In his articulation of Radical Digital Painting, Jeffrey Alan Scudder has developed an optimistic view of painting’s future that begins from an in-depth focus on digital materiality. “Painting is just a kind of picture message,” he argues, investigating strategies for the continuation of painting by other means. Scudder has a deep interest in education and has expanded his practice further through the Whistlegraph TikTok account, which boasts 1.3 million followers. There, Scudder and collaborators share lectures and drawing tutorials that are set to music. Scudder thinks of the drawing instructions as a sort of human-executable code. He has also developed the No Paint software, which is a unique iOS app that allows users to mix gesture and coding to create painterly compositions.

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Colors:

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• digital.a.01
• teaching_method.n.01
• technology.n.01
• painting.n.01
• democracy.n.01