‘The Visible Word’ – Caseroom Cluster
Formed in June 2022, this Glasgow School of Art research cluster has been exploring the cross-disciplinary research potential of The Caseroom, GSA’s collection of Letterpress printing equipment. Group members include practitioners of Silversmithing, Textiles, Creative and Critical Writing, Graphic Design, Print, and Interaction Design.
Using the Caseroom as both archive and provocation, we explored key themes from our initial brief through the lens of our own practices – text as image; image as text; language into form; form into language – with focus on materiality, craft, process, physicality and print history. Through collective discussion and experimentation we examined the shared craft heritage between print culture and other specialist practices, such as type-cutting and fine casting within Jewellery, or block printing within Textiles. We recognised the significance of industrial mechanisation which gave further echoes across disciplines such as coding.
Building on a process of making and sharing, the final outcomes of our collaborations include an exploration of transcoding procedures which appear both in the textile-based outcome in weave, and the image/sound work derived from the binary-encoded punch tapes used in type casting instructions. Other contributions explore the materiality of type metal and other alloys, the material presence of ‘letters’, and the significance of the grid in design.
This exhibition features the Monotype MIDI work.
