In Process is a series that examines the inspiration, methods, and tools used by artists to create their work. Each episode focuses on a specific piece.
Find all episodes of In Process on the Ep. 0: Index page.
In this episode, we explore FOAMED 02 by LotteZ (pictured above).
I love it when artists bring two mediums together and this piece is an excellent example of that. LotteZ’s work has a strong foundation in glitch art, but the juxtaposition with the “linocut” physical style gives it a lovely hybrid quality and physicality that I find alluring.
Learn more about how the piece came about below.
What was the inspiration for FOAMED 02?
With art becoming more and more digital, it’s so easy to erase irregularities and imperfections, however, it’s those irregularities and imperfections that I feel give a piece of art it’s character. It is often in those irregularities that the choices and the personality of the artist shines through.
In the early 00s I was a live videojockey in the Dutch rave scene. In those days laptops weren’t as reliable as they are now so, along with my laptop, I used to bring a V4 video mixer and multiple analog video sources. Not only to mix the videos stylistically to the music, but also as an emergency backup, in case the laptop over heated/got beer over it, which happened quite a lot back then.
Here’s an example of me VJ’ing with my hardware back then.
This early video mixing came with its own visible imperfections, which I was happy to upgrade to cleaner visuals, when the techniques improved.
I’ve always been inspired by the old analog artists that were a little rough around the edges, like Herman Brood, Basquiat and Karel Appel, but also by old punk record sleeves, cheap Xerox’d rave flyers on bright coloured paper, etc.
With the analog and technical barriers out of the way, there seems to be no need to make visuals look rough or imperfect again, so you don’t see a lot of digital artists do it.
FOAMED is a piece that combines my need to create imperfect work in both my analog as well as my digital work.
Most times I work in these two artistic expressions separately, but this piece combines the two.
Describe the technical process of the piece. What medium and tools were most important to creating it?
FOAMED started out as a linocut print. Lino is a technique for which you carve shapes into linoleum or a sheet of rubber. It is like making a stamp and is very hard to make perfect lines and shapes. Just like a stamp it can leave little imperfections in the black ink.
This is a video of a different piece I made, but the technique for the base of FOAMED is the same.
After the black ink dried, I scanned the print and used the black as a mask for my glitch art.
I make my digital glitches in multiple ways. This specific one was made with the help of a datamoshing script and After Effects, that completely trashed an old Christmas animation I made. It is funny that it is totally unrecognisable now.
Mostly I make my glitch art using two original V4 video mixers, several digital inputs and a hardware circuit bend switch.
Talk about the NFT of the piece, specifically. How did minting the piece as an NFT affect how you approached making it? Why did you choose to mint on hic et nunc?
I minted this one on hic et nunc because I wanted it to be affordable, so more than one person would be able to own it. Also to get more people to know me.
Because of the low gas fees it feels safe to mint my experiments on Tezos, which I believe makes for more interesting art.
I love minting and collecting on Tezos. The community is super supportive and the art is affordable and nice and wacky! And the secondary sales are nice.
Where is the best place to learn more about your work?
I have a Linktree that shows all the online places I hang out. You can find me on Twitter too!
