Ancient Wallpaper
An example of a historic wallpaper pattern printed digitally.
By Ed Avis
I had the good fortune to attend the convention of motio, the German reprographics association, in late August in Kassel. One of the most valuable parts of the event, called Netzwerktage 2015, was learning about some of the money-making ventures the Germans are embarking on. These are not groundbreaking ideas, but I’m sharing them here in hopes that they motivate a few IRgA members to try them as well.
Be the Artists’ Best Friend – Perhaps the most interesting presentation at Netzwerktage was by Andreas Weber, CEO of a business called Value Communication. Weber enthusiastically described how reprographics businesses can get involved with artists, and not just in the normal inkjet poster printing kind of way. Weber explained his belief that digital color printing should be legitimately considered another tool in the artist’s studio, not some kind of cheat that lazy artists use when they don’t feel like painting. For example, he described how one artist asked guests arriving at a reception for her new exhibition to sign their names on a tablet; a computer program then rendered all of the guests’ signatures in the artist’s own style; and a printer loaded with a continuous roll of paper output a long stream of these artistically rendered signatures right there during the event. Of course, reproducing existing works of art is a common way many repro shops to tap the artist market, but Weber said even that kind of work can be done better if the shop is creative. For example, he described how one digital printer created multiple decks of playing cards with the artist/client’s work on each front – an effective, inexpensive way for the artist to disseminate his work. Weber’s point was that if a reprographics shop partners with artists, and suggests creative ways that digital printing can be employed in their work, it may open new markets for them.
Off the Wall – Wallpaper printing is a growing market for many repro shops, and most work with designers, builders, etc. to custom print wallpaper for specific projects. But motio put a twist on this market by inviting Astrid Wegener to speak. Wegener is the manager of the German Wallpaper Museum, an institution devoted to preserving ancient wall coverings. Wegener discussed the history of wallpaper and the museum’s collection, which was interesting in itself, but then a panel of repro folks described how they scanned some examples from the collection and created facsimiles that could be used as new wallpaper. So the wallpaper from centuries-old German castles was given new life on modern walls! During the panel discussion the idea arose of creating an image database from the museum that reprographers could tap when creating wallpaper for clients. Royalties would then accrue to the museum. Presumably such an arrangement could extend to U.S. reprographers, and/or we could do the same with old wallpaper samples here.
3D to the Max – 3D printing, like wallpaper printing, is not new. But at Netzwerktage two interesting ideas were discussed. First, one vendor in the trade show, Makerlounge 3D-Studio, has developed a full-body camera that they demonstrated at the show. It’s kind of a circular cage that’s big enough for a person to easily stand in. Each “bar” of the cage contains a camera (not a scanner), so the person is encircled in cameras. The cameras snap a photo of the person and send the photographic data to the processor, which turns the images into files that can be printed on a 3D printer. The other cool thing they demonstrated was a drone helicopter that can scan a worksite or neighborhood and transmit the data to your iPhone. Those files can then be converted to 3D print files, allowing the shop to create 3D models of scenes that would otherwise be difficult to capture.