Accelerated Entropy by Spaceheater Editions
Philip Zimmermann: “’Accelerated Entropy’ is another in a series of books on climate change that I started in 2017 with the publication of ‘Landscapes of the Late Anthropocene’, followed by his 2023 book ‘Melt’. It has been published at the same time as another title with the identical format and similar climate change subject matter, ‘In the Desert’. This book uses a series of photographs of lush vegetation and flora that gradually decays and disintegrates by way of the use of various halftone patterns. The images get rougher and more dystopic as the book progresses. Included on a colophon page is a poem that uses prepress process and photomechanical terms to describe that decay.
“Since I was in graduate school in the 1970s, I have been playing with halftone screens and using them as more than just a way to translate continuous-tone photographs to ink on paper. In those pre-digital days, everything was done photomechanically, using specialized half-tone screens and lithographic film and lots of hand skills. For part of my graduate thesis, I made a portfolio of portraits of various friends at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY, and gave them different halftone treatments that roughly aligned with my perceived interpretation of their personalities. That portfolio was called Portrait Constructions. Later I published a 1984 book, Civil Defense, that was a dystopic comment on Ronald Reagan’s Cold War. The book’s images slowly disintegrated (by way of more and more discordant and larger halftone dots and patterns) as the book progressed.
“In this current book, ‘Accelerated Entropy’, I have used a similar technique, but this time using contemporary digital methods, where the progressive computer-derived halftone patterns and various types of rasters, act as a metaphor for the damage and degradation that climate change is having on the grown environment. The original photos were all taken in the lush undergrowth of a rainforest in Oahu, Hawai’i in 2012. I wrote the poem … as a tongue-in-cheek name-checking device for both the disappearing vegetation as well as the old beloved taxonomy of vintage pre-press skills and techniques.”
Processes, Dimensions, and Edition Information
By Philip Zimmermann
Tucson, Arizona: Spaceheater Editions, 2024. Edition of 50.Hand-bound hardcover. Signed and numbered by the artist.