- printer / scanner / photocopier
- paper
Do:
- Select whatever images you like to work with - photographic, illustrative, or other.
- Scan them.
- You might want to experiment with different scanning and printing settings - resolution, brightness, contrast.
- Print them.
- Scan the images again, altering them digitally if you wish before printing them again.
- Repeat the print/scan process as many times as you wish, hopefully introducing new distortions and artefacts each time.
Notes:
- Try different scanning techniques - changing the scanning angle, introducing other physical distortions like crumpling or tearing the paper, changing printer or scanning settings each turn.
- When done the print/scan turns, you can move on to either digitally manipulating your last scanned image, or altering the printout with other media.
- Don't worry about getting perfect scans - the mistakes, imperfections, and noise are the best part, and actually what you're looking for.
- Try scanning different materials - textured/coloured papers, fabrics, or found objects.
- Each iteration should degrade the image further, with increasing noise, loss of detail, and other artefacts which increase the abstraction of colour, shape, texture.