Surface Signal Press Publishes Paper on Digital Printing and Urban Repair

Surface & Signal Press, an independent arts-research communications imprint operated by Jeekwai Art Co Ltd, has announced the publication of a peer-reviewed paper in the Proceedings of EVA London 2026. Titled "Fixing Chicago Neighbourhood and New Nature: Simulation with Paper and Digital Printing," the paper is authored by Jiaqi Li, Wenru Xu, and Elke Reinhuber. It examines how photography, digital processing, and paper printing can transform images into physical surfaces, exploring the intersection of digital media and materiality.

The open-access paper is available at https://doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVA2026.15. It focuses on two artworks by Jiaqi Li: New Nature (2019) and Fixing Chicago Neighbourhood (2020). In New Nature, photographs of organic materials such as banana peel, chicken skin, plants, and caterpillars were processed into repeating digital textures and printed on paper. These prints were then assembled into more than fifty hollow sculptural forms. The work contrasts the visual appearance of organic matter with a lightweight, constructed interior, highlighting the separation between surface and structure.

Fixing Chicago Neighbourhood began with photographs of damaged surfaces in Chicago, including cracks in roads, walls, paving, and transit stations. The damaged areas were digitally reconstructed and printed at approximately their original scale. The resulting paper images were placed over the damaged sites as temporary interventions. The authors note that these did not repair the underlying material but made visible the difference between an appearance of repair and actual material repair.

The paper situates these projects between simulation, trompe l'oeil, and optical illusion. Rather than aiming for flawless deception, the works retain visible seams, repeated textures, paper edges, and other material inconsistencies. These features allow viewers to recognize the construction of the image while it occupies physical space. The authors propose the term "expanded trompe l'oeil" for contemporary practices that extend beyond illusionistic painting to include photography, digital printing, sculpture, installation, screens, projections, public interventions, and video-game aesthetics. The paper argues that the imperfect return of a digital image to material form can reveal a productive gap between virtual representation and physical objects.

The paper appears on pages 83-88 of the open-access Proceedings of EVA London 2026, published by BCS Learning and Development Ltd. EVA London, or Electronic Visualisation and the Arts, is an interdisciplinary conference on art, visualisation, and digital technologies. The 2026 conference took place in London and online from July 13 to 17.

Surface & Signal Press is an independent arts-research communications imprint operated by Jeekwai Art Co Ltd. The imprint publishes factual, accessible communications about contemporary art, visual culture, digital media, and research-led creative practice. Its work focuses on how images, materials, and technical systems shape public and everyday environments.