random (8) is an installation of woodblock prints combining digital technology with analog printmaking. I write looping algorithms that generate images of noise — randomized pixelated grids. These grids are physically mapped by hand onto a printing matrix using woodblocks, and once set, are inked and printed on paper with a table-top etching press. The title of the work, random (8), refers to the function in the code that generates random numbers (1 to 8) which I use to assign the color of each pixel/woodblock: 1 = cyan, 2 = magenta, 3 = yellow, 4 = black, etc. Printmaking is just an extension of the code — the performance of an analog algorithm — every print that I make is an iteration of the loop.

For me, process outweighs outcome and outcome is arbitrary. With every print there are a seemingly infinite number of possible arrangements, and the repetitive and absurd Sisyphean task of attempting to print all of them becomes an obsession. My use of simple forms, straight-out-of-the-can process colors, random number generators, and the printed mark, all underscore a deliberate attempt to deny intention and cede artistic control to chance. To affirm chance is to affirm the material world as it is — a series of events in a constant state of becoming. By printing the same thing over and over you start to see the differences. Nothing that repeats is the same.

Just as the river where I step
is not the same, and is,
so I am as I am not.
—Heraclitus

Noah Matteucci is a printmaker living and working in Vancouver, WA. During the day he works in the Fine Arts Department at WSU Vancouver and at night he makes prints in a little studio located in the bowels of his house — a space that many people would describe as a basement. You can find him online at:

noahmatteucci.com
instagram: @noahmatteucci