The exhibition The Negligent Eye reflects on the ways contemporary artists have used scanning technology in their work, particularly in the area of printmaking. The project reflects an increasing experimentation with computers, rapid-form and 3D scanning and digital multiplication, through printed, sculptural, video and mixed media work, as well as earlier artworks using reprographic processes, and archival material.

Curated by Jo Stockham in collaboration with the Bluecoat Gallery, the project reflects upon how over-immersion in the space of the computer creates a sense of estrangement from the world. The exhibition engages with wider questions around the impact of digital technology on our lives. How, for instance, are scanning technologies changing how we picture and experience the world? The barcode, airport body scanners, medical scans and document scanners are all fraught with notions of both revelation and theft, while the extension of digital multiplication into cloning remains contentious.

The publication that accompanies the exhibition develops these ideas through essays by Jo Stockham and Chantal Faust, exploring the idea that the scan is both a ‘close reading and a glance’, an apparent contradiction that the artists explore through the rapidly developing scanning and digital reprographic processes at their disposal.

Images of the works in the exhibition are accompanied by texts from the artists – including Cory Arcangel, Christiane Baumgartner, Jyll Bradley, Maurice Carlin, Susan Collins, Conroy/Sanderson, Nicky Coutts, Elizabeth Gossling, Juneau Projects, Bob Matthews, London Fieldworks, Marilène Oliver, South Atlantic Souvenirs, Imogen Stidworthy – in response to questions about their relationship to scanning.