Friday, February 08, 2008

Print and Web2.0 - its Elemental!

I am really intrigued by the possibilities of the wealth of online tools that printmakers are just beginning to explore. Printmakers by nature and medium are a tribe - and the web2.0 tools like blogs, websites and photoblogs offer these artists a way to connect. They are often clumsy - very rarely elegant, but I like the fits and starts of this new technology--making it feel so much more human.

This morning while drinking my coffee, I came across this print project this morning - The 2007 Periodic Table of Elements Printmaking Project. The website is great - offering a simple to navigate selection of thumbnails arranged in the form of, what else? - the periodic table. The producer, AzureGrackle also created posts on Etsy and another link to the related flickr site creating a multilevel project - with several entry points.

This project involved 96 printmakers from 8 countries - and it was started only last March - this kind of process is only feasible because of the internet (or innerweb as I really like to call it.)