Patricia Piccinini explores ideas of what is ‘natural’ in the digital world and questions the impact of science and technology on life and the human form. Photography was central to her early career and laid the foundations for her ongoing interest in digital technologies and the manipulation of ‘reality’. ‘Waiting for Jennifer’ is from Piccinini’s photographic series SO2 (series 1), which presents fictional narratives of a mutant creature engaging in everyday Australian life, in this case riding in a car with a young man. Piccinini’s creature, SO2 (synthetic organism 2) was inspired by a real life event; the creation of SO1, a microorganism that was the world’s first synthetic life-form. SO2 features in many of Piccinini’s works, in both two and three dimensional form. The creature, now known as Siren Mole, represents the dream of creating a new life and raises issues surrounding the definition of life, and how it might be affected by new medicine and contemporary genetic technologies.
(2016)
Chromogenic prints are printed on paper that has at least three emulsion layers containing invisible dyes and silver salts. Each emulsion layer is sensitive to a different primary colour of light (red, green or blue). The development process converts the hidden dyes to visible colour depending on the amount of light it was exposed to. This type of paper is commonly used to print from colour negatives or digital files to produce a full-colour image. It can also be used to print black-and-white images, giving softer grain and less contrast than gelatin silver prints. Commonly known as c-type prints, chromogenic processing was developed in the 1940s and widely used for colour printing, including for domestic snapshots. While recent years have seen this process accompanied by ink-jet and digital printing technologies, chromogenic printing still remains in use to this day.
