I am working on getting parts of the text of Border Country by Raymond Williams (https://www.waterstones.com/book/border-country/raymond-williams/9781902638812
) printed onto fabric tape, but also considering how this might work on the Mobile Library vehicle. Spring action maybe so the tape reels back onto a spool, like a tape measure or dog lead. Am currently simply working out how large the text needs to be. I would like the audience to be able to see the words, or at a distance, to at least see it as text.
So far I have tried printing out onto paper from my laser printer, onto ribbon with letter stamps manually. I have recently been writing (blog like but it hasn’t been going online) on a typewriter regularly and have visions of a over-sized typewriter-like tape printing machine. I would type as I usually would on the keyboard, but the output could be onto a strip of fabric tape.
I have found there is such a thing as a digital ribbon printer, a Phase II Digital Ribbon Printer – and trying to figure out why my immediate reaction is that it is too neat and cleanly printed! The clean edges of the characters just grates on me – it creates too much distance between myself and the text. With manual printing or handwriting the visible involvement of the hand means I feel a stronger connection to the words, as if they could have come direct from myself (along with errors in the process).
I am hunting online to try and find out first if anyone has made this kind of contraption I’m talking about. Printing machines need to be looked at again (these were involved in my dissertation 2 years ago, and print research has popped up many times since for various purposes).
Thinking about my material choice, I have been solely thinking of using fabric tape to print on. Why this and not pvc, elastic, rope, silicone? Cotton tape would seem to work best for strength and for ease of rolling it back onto a spool.
More vital to all this now is my cribbing up on performance art as a medium with it being so new to me. I have been watching how Cirque du Soleil use sets, props and costumes, and see I need to find performers who work in a way more linked in some way to my values and intentions for this piece.
