Homework 5.2. Yes You Scan: Scanography in the Classroom

I can remember being in high school (I think probably my Junior year), and being asked to bring in a photograph of a memory; most students, including myself, brought in pictures from childhood. It was both incredibly entertaining and powerful to be able to look back and see the memories that we all had from our pasts, and how we had gone from where (and who) we were in those photographs to the 15, 16, and 17 year olds who were sitting in that art room. I think that act of looking back really spoke to where we were at at that point in our lives, thinking about potential colleges and futures and what we would all be doing in the years to come. We were then asked to take those images and make copies of them, and photo-transfer them to canvases, where we were asked to paint over them, and transform them in some way. I think this is where the project lost most of us.

The printer gave us only black and white copies, and it made our photographs look dull and grainy. The process of transferring the images to canvases didn't help the aesthetic quality of the images that we chose either, and felt somewhat purposeless as it further deteriorated the image quality and didn't feel as though it added any meaning to the images at all. And when we went to transform the images with paint, many of us felt stuck; were we supposed to paint over our little faces, the faces of family members we loved and maybe even had lost? The additions we were asked to make did not seem to add to the images at all; we didn't feel as though we were transforming them as much as we were covering them up. Many students simply began to add borders and other decoration to the images; adding any more paint just didn't seem right. Instead, it felt forced and weird and ruinous. Frankly speaking, the project was not a success.

How did this project start out so strongly and then fall flat so quickly? The content was poignant and interesting, engaging and relatable. We started out excited to work with these very precious images, these memories that we held dear. However, the messages that we wanted to convey were simply not translated through the traditional processes and materials that my teacher had chosen.

I think that the content of this project would have provided a perfect opportunity to work with scanography; we would have been able to work more closely with the original images, or at least direct copies of them rather than the original images three and four iterations removed. Both digitally and within the scanners, we could have been able to add layers, to play with space, arrangement, and color, all in ways that the traditional materials did not. Our experiments also would not have necessarily been permanent. I think if we had been able to work with these images in a digital media project based in scanography and perhaps photoshop, our final pieces would not only have been more satisfying, but more meaningful, more respectful, more honoring of the memories that we had chosen to share.

Scanners can be an incredible tool in the classroom, and are likely something that children have already encountered at some point in their lives (albeit not necessarily in as a tool for art-making). Easily accessible (many inexpensive printers now come with them built in), and relatively simple to use, children and adolescents are able to upload and manipulate images that might otherwise feel too precious to 'mess around with.' The use of a scanner inherently allows for many iterations and alterations, and can give students the freedom to experiment in ways that they might not feel comfortable with traditional media. A scanner also has the ability to idiosyncratically distort images, which also could lead to interesting experimentations.

In my opinion, scanography has vast applications and abilities in both art making and the art classroom, and should be more widely embraced as both a tool and a medium. Should we scan more? Say it with me: Yes, you scan!

Jules Varnedow. Scan, 1971. 2010.
Image from https://www.flickr.com/photos/julesvarnedoe/5070830953/in/photostream

Scanner Self Portrait. 2012. Image from https://imgur.com/CYnqT

Image from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/205124958002650429/