With the works of the Berlin-based artist Wolfgang Plöger, the Konrad Fischer Galerie presents the results of an artistic research project titled The Tracking Dots Project that began two years ago and is dedicated to making Machine Identification Codes (MIC), the so-cal- led tracking dots, visible. These microscopically small yellow dots, invisible to the human eye, which are used to mark the paper on most colour laser machines during every digital printing or copying process, were already detected and criticised by the Electronic Fron- tier Foundation in 2005. Using the identification code in the form of a yellow dot grid, it is possible to trace back which printer was used at which time and even shredded documents can be reconstructed with the help of these tracking dots.
The new Support series, which started in 2022, uses 3D printing or additive manufacturing (AM) as a technique for printing picture frames. The printing programme (slicer) genera- tes the support structures needed to stabilise the frames, which are normally removed from the target object but here mutate into the picture object.
Wolfgang Plöger has been working with digital images and their generation, availability and distribution for more than 20 years and thus explores the performative level of images, where the respective technologies, from printing to distribution, decisively de- termine the effect of the pictorial information.
