The Negligent Eye @ The Bluecoat, Liverpool, until 15 Jun

A monochrome baby boy stares warily out at the viewer. The child is from another world, an alien or astronaut; lines run down his face in cosmic interference. Created in 1957 by computer scientist Russell Kirsch, this is the first print ever to be made on a digital scanner. Kirsch chose a photograph of his son to mark this technological rite-of-passage – opening the door to satellite imaging, CAT scans, barcodes and the replicable printable future we know today.

The Negligent Eye has been curated by Jo Stockham, Head of Printmaking at The Royal College of Art, in an attempt to ‘reflect increasing experimentation (in the print-making form) with computers, rapid-form, 3D scanning and digital multiplication’. It's certainly a lot of ground to cover and, due to its scale (at least 28 artists and groups exhibiting), the show can be a little hit and miss. What it lacks in clarity, however, it makes up for in variety, and maybe that's the point – there will be something for everyone.

Some of the strongest smaller works come from big names (Wolfgang Tillmans, Rachel Whiteread and Thomas Bewick), but there is a broad range of younger artists. In the first gallery, Beatrice Haines’ electron microscopic scans of her mother’s gallstones, Heavenly Bodies, brain-like moons glowing against the walls are romantic and disgusting – reminding us of the distant universe lurking inside, remote even to ourselves. Good Morning Captain from Juneau Projects (Ben Sadler and Phil Duckworth) is funny and a little sad, with the artists dragging a scanner around a garden at night. The usually office-based appliance produces wobbly grass scans on its plug-leash travels. On top of the box monitor showing documentation of this process, a crow keeps watch as, finally, the scanner realises the subversion of its true purpose, crashes and dies.  

Most successfully, the sometimes tricky top-floor gallery is given over solely to a pared down version of Imogen Stidworthy’s installation, Sacha, originally shown in its entirety at Matt's Gallery, London, in 2003. The video follows wire-tap analyst Sacha van Loo, who was born blind and works as a language and dialect genius with Antwerp Police. The viewer can physically step inside the installation and become temporarily immersed in van Loo’s intimate processes. Using his body as the device, Sacha is a picture of concentration as he detects and scans – deciding fates, guilt and innocence.