THE VISIBLE WORD
Using the Caseroom as both archive and provocation, we explored key themes from our initial brief through the lens of our own practices, which include: text as image; image as text; language into form; and form into language, with focus on materiality, craft, process, physicality and print history.
Work-in-progress shows in November 2022 and September 2023 allowed us to quickly create artefacts which moved the creative process forwards by developing the unexpected insights gained through re-interpretation of the knowledge-making methods and traditions of Letterpress. Building on this process of making and sharing, the final outcomes of our collaborations have included an exploration of translation/ transformation through code which appears both in the textile-based outcome in weave and the image/ sound work which is derived from Monotype type casting instructions, which were inscribed as binary instructions in punch tapes. Jacquard weaving, also presented in this exhibition, offered a first template for inventors of prototype computer mechanisms through the use of binary-coded punch cards. Other contributions have explored the materiality of type metal and other alloys, the material presence of ‘letters’, and the significance of the grid in design teaching (and embedded in our ordering of knowledge and data). The text-setting procedures of the Caseroom have given rise to current communication design and information layouts but have also nourished bold innovation in advertising through the visible word displayed on the street and in the everyday environment. Finally, this rich tradition of print trade promotions have been re-considered from the perspective of creative writing practice and re-purposed display posters.
NB: A Caseroom is a space devoted to storing the metal types used in letterpress printing. This was the predominant medium for the production of text in the West after the invention of the printing press c. 1450. The GSA Caseroom is the largest letterpress facility in a Scottish Higher Education Institution. It houses approximately 300 cases of metal type and an extensive collection of wooden type, comparable with any UK/EU HEI. It is home to multiple printing presses and associated machinery, the oldest of which date from the mid-nineteenth century. The Caseroom is the only Scottish member of the European Association of Printing Museums and a founding member of the International Association of Printing Museums.