Jarod Shaw - DisCONNEXION

     I visited the Austin Museum of Art. The one piece of work that caught my attention was that of photographer Danwen Xing. Her untitled 2003 chromogenic color print (b3) in the DisCONNEXION series, hailing from South China’s Guangdong province. These intricate images of electronic components dazzle the eye while illuminating the disjunction between global consumption and environmentalism. The visual representation of structure via the rectangular shape of the boards is predominant. The cluttered mess of boards seems to fill wherever they are, whether they are just in a big pile or in some bin. In the actual blown up image part numbers, company logos, and even people’s names can be made out. The overwhelming use of the “circuit board” shades of green and brown combined with the rectangular shapes offer a very intense rhythm. The picture helps records and documents the mass quantities of “e-trash” that is currently shipped to China to recycle. The tiny dark shadows created by the piling of boards indicate a lot more underneath. The texture is very sporadic due to the nature of circuit boards with old solder, small wires, capacitors, resistors, transistors, integrated circuits, relays, switches, leads, and cords. All the electrical components that make up what we call our luxuries are ripped out and thrown in a pile to be forgotten about. This is a two-dimensional chromogenic color print. A chromogenic color print is made from a color negative or a color transparency. The etymology is Greek, chroma meaning color forming. The process was invented by Leopolde Mannes (1899-1964) and Leopolde Godowsky in 1935. The process was then acquired and perfected by Kodak. Kodak first marketed under the name under the name kodachrome, chromogenic prints are composed of light-sensitized assimilated in at least three layers of gelatin silver emulsion. The primary colors of light red, green, or blue are used to sensitize each of the three principal layers with a corresponding dye and developing agent sandwiched in between, the dyes within the layers act together to produce a color print. At the time of exposure through a negative, a gelatin silver image is formed in each layer. That colorless image unites the dye couplers with chemicals in the emulsion layers to form the appropriate combination of colors of the object photographed. Any remaining silver is bleached out of the image and dissolved during the fixing process. The layers appear as a single, full-color image, when the emulsion is seen against white background paper. Chromogenic prints, while not as stable as prints from other color process, tend to have the most naturalistic color. I think for the most part people would probably past by this and not think twice about it. Being in the industry and having built some circuit boards and thrown away a few myself this piece intrigued me. I always wondered what happened to all the stuff, after I built up a replacement board what happened to the old boards, now I know. A picture of the artwork may be seen below.