A new exhibition that poses the question: What is the fate of ink on paper in the digital age has just opened at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons The New School for Design. For all who have been involved in the accelerating shift from traditional offset printing to digital, in all of its levels and iterations, this show is a must.

Organized in conjunction with London's Royal College of Art (RCA) Postgraduate Art and Design program, the show explores in depth the ways in which printing in the digital realm is the same but different than before.

Installation photos courtesy the Sheila C. Johnson Design Cente, Parsons The New School for Design.

Before what? is an important question to ask when confronted with wall texts that at first seem somewhat superficial. For example, a text by contributing artist Leah Harrison Bailey of Happily Ever After, a London design firm: "The printer [meaning the machine] is a place where a kind of technological transubstantiation occurs, where the insubstantial becomes material. As this semi-magical operation happens at arm's length, we the users cannot be part of the making - we press a button and off it goes, we have no hand, literally, in the making of the object."

As I studied the beautifully printed examples of several dozen explorations, some of which blur boundaries between design and scientific inquiry, I began to question assumptions that have crept into my thinking about ink on paper. My own experience with printing began with the most theatrical of methods, including offset lithography and, prior to that, intaglio printing. From small run artist editions to corporate projects printed offset in the tens of thousands, printing was very much a hands on experience that came with heady aromas, split-second timing, and risky decisions at every stage. My experience with digital printing has been limited so far by limitations in reproducing photographs. Hence, a few numbing assumptions about new print media have crept in.

A text with the alluring title, "Where Is the Dot?" by Mark Wilson, one of RCA's Research Assistants, snapped me back into the present: "Computers and software have made the number of choices so immense that, in some sense, artistic intuition and choice are now more important than ever." This simply stated fact put the text quoted above into relief, showing that there are many more considerations - and therefore, opportunities - to "re-engage, to adjust the tactile tradition of craft for the digital age," one of the main concerns of Lucille Tenazas, Henry Wolf Professor of Communication Design at Parsons.

And that is what this exhibition offers in thought provoking examples that range from purely artistic imaging, such as Blue Blab Wallpaper and Red Blab Wallpaper, two mural-sized pieces by Andrea Dezso (Parsons Illustration Department faculty) to a series of highly theoretical design studies by Dan Fern (co-initiator of the exhibition and Head of the School of Communications at RCA). The center space of the gallery is occupied by a 24-foot-long table supporting 16 copies of a book that contains text regarding most of the projects included in the show along with the images bound in. Wearing white gloves (provided) I scanned the pages to see how each project was the same but different in the book and on the wall, and from one copy of the publication to the next.

"The Same But Different" could easily be the sub-title of this engrossing and demanding exhibition. It has arrived just in time for all the overachievers in town for Illustration Week - and by now, you know who you are.

Control: Print, a collaborative exhibition between The Royal College of Art and Parsons the New School for Design continues at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center through December 14^th. 66 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY. For information about the exhibition and the upcoming Control/Print Lab project, please visit the Design Center website. You can also visit the RCA website, which includes the Control: Print book mentioned above.

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