Edinburgh Napier University

  This paper examines the impact digital culture, Web 2.0 and Online Networking, an area we might collectively define as e-culture, is having on the practice, modes of collaboration, distribution and consumption within contemporary printmaking. The authors will examine, from the perspective of critically engaged practice, developments in social networking and affinity spaces that have seen the creation and promotion of new affinity groupings or engaged networks, which have extended our traditional and existing collaborative atelier models, towards promoting significantly new collaborative and participative modalities. Drawing on primary research, which forms part of a PhD project, involving a survey of ‘49’ international practitioners together with the comparative analysis of current printmakers networks, such as ‘Inkteraction’, an argument is proposed for an alternative ‘Virtual Atelier’ model, which extends the traditional collaborative model originally conceived in connection with the working practices of S.W. Hayter’s Atelier 17. These developments and practitioners’ greater engagement with social networking and digital networks, are resulting in artistic collaborations which might be seen to extend over both time and distance in wholly new collaborative ways. Raising philosophical questions around: the impact e-culture, de-materialised practice and emerging new models of print-based artistic practice are having on this area. The paper concludes that this process is and has been evolutionary rather than revolutionary in the context of fine art print practice.