Townsley, Jill (2011) The Process of Repetition - Digital Representations of Repetitive Labour Through Time. In: Soft Borders Conference & Festival Proceedings: papers. Upgrade International, Sao Paulo, Brazil, pp. 77-83. ISBN 9788587985415
Abstract

This paper considers time based media and specifically digital representations of repetitive labour utilised in the process of art production. There is some precedence for the consideration of repetition observed as a repeated subject or object, and especially the Warholian like repeated image. Rosalind Krauss observed in The Originality of the Avant-Garde: A Postmodernist Repetition (1981) that many artists are ‘condemned to repeating as if by compulsion, the logically fraudulent original’. Here I address a different presentation of repetition, the repeated action of labour that accumulates during the process of production, and the digital imagery that allows access to this often-temporal activity.
Referring to work produced as case studies, for a practice based PhD entitled ‘Moments of Repetition in the Process of Art Production: Temporalities, Labour, Appropriations and Authorships’ (2010) I will discuss how repetition may interact with time based media. Considering not just the repetitive aspects of ‘the loop’ but also elements of ‘time’ altered through digital representations.
Simple digital imagery and animation sequencing can help identify a number of issues that are significant to the consideration of repetition as it relates to the process of production. They include ‘failure through repetition', ‘temporality', ‘erasure' and ‘shifting authorships'.
The purpose of the repeated action within process can be considered more complex than a means to an end. It is not just a prerequisite to forming a critical mass or achieving a particular form. When observed from the standpoint of different schema such as time, the simulacra, mimesis or theories of replication, the repetition within process can be seen to affect the object, its relation to the viewer, authorship (either deferring or claiming) and the subject.
The paper concludes that a strong critical position can be utilised through observing the process of production as revealed through digital media. Process as a critical tool to help connect with the wider concepts that repetition can present to us.

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