Post Image Lab

End of August we received a notice that the Post Image Lab will be relocated to the 5th floor, into a former class room of the Faculty of Fine Arts. This decision was brought to us without any previous consultation.

Everyone who has worked at Post Image knows that it is a unique space. It was set up by artists for artists, and has been built to provide the specific viewing conditions we need to judge and fine tune large scale prints, something no other place in Canada offers. Countless exhibitions have been born here, and some of them have been presented around the world. Its open space concept has been instrumental in fostering collaborations, and has made it a meeting place for artists researchers to exchanging ideas.

How much of all this we will be able to put to the 5th floor remains to be seen. The space is 25% smaller, and Fine Arts has no budget allocated to facilitate the necessary constructions to mirror the 10th floor space. While they are doing their best to make at least some of the modifications for the move, the space has for sure not the same quality. The best we can hope for is a “light” version of the Post Image Lab.

An official announcement came out on September 27*, which does not really explain why this is happening. It only says that it is about to “make best use of our spaces”. We can only guess what they are trying to say here, but we would like to point out that we have always made “best use” of our space.

If you have questions about this (as many do), or if you are concerned how this will affect your research, you can e-mail Angela Tsafaras,  (angela.tsafaras@concordia.ca) Joel Taylor, (joel.taylor@concordia.ca) – both Faculty of Fine Arts, or Bart Simon, Director, Milieux Institute  (bart.simon@concordia.ca).

*The announcement from September 27 you can read here!

EV 5.615, a classroom at the CDA where Post Image should move in 2025.

Note that the Post Image Lab will be closed this summer starting June 24th until August 4th. If you have projects which need to be completed during that time, please plan ahead and make sure you will be done before the shut down. We also hope that gives you more time to enjoy the summer months – see you!

We are replacing our Epson 11880 with a brand new Epson P20000. The 11880 has been in use since 2011, and is showing signs of aging. The print quality of the new P20000 is pretty much the same, but there are some other advantages: The printer prints about double the speed, the ink has a better permanence rating, and loading paper is much easier.

Note that existing users of the 11880 will have to attend a training session before they can use the new Epson P20000.

+ The lab will be open over the Holidays, so if you want to escape Christmas and all that jazz, this is the place to go. Note that there will no staff working until January 8. If there is an emergency, you can still try to send an e-mail to postimage@concordia.ca. Depending on the case, you might get a response – or not.

The swap:

Since Hasselblad stopped manufacturing  the Flextight X1 in 2019, we had to search the second hand market for a model, and were able to secure a X1 from a L.A. based photographer. Buying a used model came with some hick ups, but in the end everything turned out to be fine. Happy to retire the Imacon 848 after 18 years of service!

First Chromira prints with Fujicolor Maxima paper on our viewing booth, teamwork by María Sánchez Martín & Pablo Pérez Díaz.

The Post Image Lab will remain open over the Holidays. So if you feel the desire to get a break from all these endless family celebrations, or don’t want to celebrate at all, the lab will be accessible 24/7, even on New Years Eve. Note that that the University is closed until January 8th, so you will need a valid ID to enter the building. Also, technical support will be close to non existent. Emails to postimage@concordia.ca will be monitored, but you can only expect an immediate response in case of an emergency.

Happy Holidays –  and see you in 2023!

Image created by DALL-E 2 with the prompt:

"A photo of cell tower in Canada, in the style of Jeff Wall."

You can now get on the waiting list for DALL-E 2, a machine learning model by OpenAI to generate digital images from text descriptions.

DALL-E 2 has learned to associate texts with image content using 650 million sample images. It is capable of representing virtually any situation in any medium and any style. The images are not assembled from individual elements, but created from scratch. Each image is therefore an original that has never existed before. Due to the large number of image examples on which Dall-E 2 was trained, the machine knows more materials, styles and art trends than a human could ever have in his head.

OpenAI announced DALL-E 2 in April 2022. Access was initially restricted to pre-selected users for a research preview due to concerns about ethics and safety.
You can join here: https://labs.openai.com/auth/signup

This is a notice to Epson 11880 users in the Post Image Lab.

Currently we experience delays and uncertainty with delivery of paper rolls. Apparently there is a global shortage of paper. If you know that sometimes in the future you will have a printing job that will require significant amount of paper please let us know well in advance. Please specify the timeline, the type of paper (if the paper is one of those that we offer) and the quantity that you will need. Based on that info we can pre-order with hope, but no guarantees, that the paper will arrive in time.

Thank you.

The Post Image Lab is now fully reopened. All workstations can be booked again individually.  We are looking forward to a productive season

For those worried about Omicron and other germs, we recommend a Korean KF94 mask. According to this test by CBC Marketplace, they perform better then N95 mask, and can be ordered here (they are also very comfortable).

Remember when the whole EV building was blinking? It was on April 5th, 2006. The project exploited a bug in the EV building: double click the lights and they go crazy. 30 people were posted on different floors and by flickering an individual switch caused the entire floor to flicker.

Blink from maroussia levesque on Vimeo.