Katinka Matson

About the Artist

artist's statement

New technologies equal new perceptions. We create tools and then mould ourselves through our use of them.

In 1975, when the inventor Ray Kurzweil created the CCD (or “Charge Coupled Device”) flatbed scanner, no one imagined that this device, with a pixel-sensor that moved slowly back and forth across the page, would bring into question our established notions about seeing, vision, and perspective.

For the past several years I have experimented with a non-photographic technique for creating images by utilizing input through the flatbed CCD scanner. No camera or lenses are used. The process involves scanning flowers and other natural objects on an open-top scanner from underneath the objects with a slo-moving sensor. This technique allows for unusual opportunities to explore new ideas involving light, time, and rhythm.

It is a radically new digital aesthetic involving both new hardware (the scanner and the inkjet printer), and software (Adobe Photoshop), that allows for a new naturalism fusing nature and technology.

Without the distortion of the lens, highly detailed resolution is uniform throughout the image, regardless of the size of the printable media. The lighting effects from the sliding sensor beneath the object, coupled with overhead effects involving lighting and movement, result in a 3-D-like imaging of intense sharpness and detail. Images created by scanning direct-to-CCD cut away layers, and go to a deeper place in us than our ordinary seeing and vision.

Katinka Matson
New York City

Katinka Matson
Born: New York, New York
Lives in New York, New York & Bethlehem, Connecticut

Education
BA, The New School, New York City

Website
www.katinkamatson.com

Selected Exhibitions

Forthcoming
Festival della Scienza 2004, Genoa, Italy, 28 October—8 November
Under the Patronage of the President of the Italian Republic

2004
No. 4 Gallery, San Diego, CA, February-April, 2004

2003
TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design Conference), Monterey, CA
katinkamatson.com: "Five Flowers" (archived gallery)

2002
katinkamatson.com: "Forty Flowers" (archived gallery)
katinkamatson.com: "Twelve Flowers" (archived gallery)

Bibliography
—"Katinka Matson" (Feature), Plexus Magazine, 2007
—Cover, Journal of Experimental Botany "Flowering Newsletter", 2007
—"Extraordinary Flowers", AD Magazine (Netherlands), October 8, 2005
—Andrian Kreye, "Spider Flowers: Katinka Matson Scanner Art Fascinates With Intensive Clarity", August 1, 2005
—L. Gu, ""The Flowers of Katinka Matson "Grow" in the Computer", Il Secolo XIX (Italy), November 5, 2004
—Haydn Shaunessey, "Discovered in a Digital Univese", Irish Times, November 4, 2004
—Celia Zanni, "Nature As A Work of Art", Collezioni, Nobember 2004
—"Three Exhibitions", La Stampa, October 30, 2004
—"Fascinating Cosmic Numbers", Panorama, October 28, 2004
—Annik Le Guerer, "Science Festival", Il Sole 24 Ore, October 17, 2004
—"Scan Your Eyes Across This," CBS News, May, 2003
—George B. Dyson, William H. Calvin, Nicholas Humphrey, Colin Tudge: "On Scanner Photography", Edge (www.edge.org), February 24, 2003
—Paul Tough, "Scanner Photography" The New York Times Magazine, December 2002
—"Flowers, Art Photography and the Scanner", Neural.it, December, 2002
Kevin Kelly, "Flowers," katinkamatson.com, February 2002