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New Window × Sacha van den Haak & Felix van Dam
In a time where the majority rather chooses for the easy and cheap digital way of working, silk screen workshops are struggling to stay afloat. The One Window #1 project is meant to show the richness and diversity of the silk screen technique by giving three completely different artists a free hand in exploring this beautiful trade. By giving them one restriction – the use of only one silk screen – the participants are challenged to develop a new outlook on this traditional technique, resulting in new possibilities for its application.
Three artists will separately develop new works, all starting with the same tool; one screen printing frame, measuring 140×100cm.
Participants: Sacha van den Haak & Felix van Dam, Rogier Arents and Aliki van der Kruijs
Sponsored by Hurtz and Publivenor.
Conclusion
As the project is about to come to an end, we wonder what the possibilities are, and what to do next.
Printing daylight
We had to travel to The Hague to make a print of our daylight ‘drawing’, since the screen printing tables inside Felix’s basement proved too small for the big screen. In the past we have printed there before, we knew our way around and were quick in preparing everything for our first screen prints.
As said earlier we washed away the excessive emulsion from the screen. There was a lot of drawing in the middle of our window. If we could print this in shades of grey we would get a beautiful overview of a day’s light. There we go. We filled the mesh with ink by pushing the squeegee over it and made a print. Hm even the side parts of the screen, which we thought would deliver an clear print, was washed out and was not really visible on paper. Ok do it again! The second time we could already see more patterns appear. We decided to keep going for at least 5 more prints to see how it would turn out. A slight improvement, but the hopes we had of getting a beautiful grey–ish centre vanished by every piece of paper that went under the window.
A bit disappointed we finished at 10 prints. There was just not more daylight to be printed. The ‘drawing’ we could see in the window was now accentuated with the black ink we used to print it with. So actually the window itself looked great. Now we have to figure out if we would expose only this detail, and continue researching after the first presentation at Graphic Design Festival Breda 2015. Or would we do it again?
Lighting the window
12 hours of ‘fun’ facts, crapping in a paper wastebasket and sparkling conversation with passersby.
Mixing the perfect solution
What we tried to do in our first attempt is extend the lighting times up to one minute in the full sun or high noon. In developing our own light sensitive emulsion we tried different mixtures until we had (what we thought was) the perfect one. Hopefully this mixture would harden completely at midday, and would not so during sunset. Our goal is to record all differences in light during a full day; every speck of cloud, a slither of mist, sun up and sun down. Hopefully we can obtain all nuances of daylight with our sun catching setup.
Here comes the sun 3.0
Making our own light sensitive emulsion. Ha! We laugh in the face of genetic deformity.
Harry Potter
Being naive is a big part of our research method. And sometimes you just have to do something even if you know what the outcome will probably be.
The never ending print machine
Working on one of our very first ideas; the never ending printing machine.
The Light Saber 2.0
In our search for the perfect ‘light brush’ we got ourselves a Reptisun 10.0 UVB.
Felix
In this post we introduce Felix as our go–to guy, why he is our go–to guy and the place that will be our home during our experiments.
Go time
Writing this post I looked over and saw the ‘Dire Straits - Love over Gold’ album cover. I wonder if you could light a silkscreen window with lightning?
The fourth participant of One Window #1
About Sacha van den Haak
While studying Graphic and Typographic Design at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, Sacha van den Haak (1980) and Floris Schrama (1980) found common ground in a conceptual approach to design and a shared, rather quirky sense of humor.
As design duo Kok Pistolet they have since then developed a keen eye for the unsaid, the unknown and sometimes even the unwanted. But however absurd an initial idea may be, Sacha and Floris will find a way to work it back to an authentic and communicative solution, perfectly fit to the assignment given.
About Felix van Dam
Felix van Dam (Utrecht/NL, 1986) graduated as a graphic designer at the School of the Arts Utrecht (HKU) in 2014. Felix focusses on everything that sounds interesting, or impossible, to him. As he rather calls himself an adventurer than a graphic designer he feels free to discover the borders of this discipline and to stretch the possibilities of the graphic techniques. His work is led by the process and by the one question ‘what is on the other side?’.