Research prints and artist books

From October 2016 until now (February 2017) I have been experimenting and researching print and artist book ideas based loosely on braille books I came across last year.

To attempt to find a visual language based on a tactile language.

Initially using fingerprints to make marks and make braille letters but flat rather than raised so they can only be read either visually or solely as pictorial. Concertina books always work well to speak a narrative or represent a series for me.

The idea of a blind language pulled me towards making blind prints, just in relief without ink (or parts without ink)

Looking at the language of braille lead me to consider code, I then looked at musical code in the form of pianola rolls which play music when put through the pianola machine and combined the pianola code with braille and blank silences.

This is a colograph print was made from card with braille letters pushed through and printed on a combination of original pianola paper, preprinted 1960's braille paper, ordinary heavy cartridge paper and combinations.

The braille reads 'Sometimes I see with my hands and see with my eyes'. The braille is oversize and would be unreadable as braille is a series of repousse dots protruding and this is a series of over large dots embossed into the paper.

This is an artist's book made with the pianola paper and fingerprints on the chords of a piano underneath and cut through. As the playing of this music leaves blank spaces into which we read.

This work brought about a small series of folded paper prints. The middle one, a part of the first of the four prints above.

I also started making braille letters by piercing mesh and made another series of work whilst pulling the mesh apart. This also helped develop the idea of making short films, one with mesh, one with the pianola and one making marks on a zinc plate (films to follow)

Difficult to see on a screen but very fine metal mesh, ripped down to wire in the second print. The prints are printed using oil based ink rolled on covered with a fine sprinkling of graphite powder. The smaller prints below show more of a progression of tearing the mesh.

 In the end, I believe these mesh works to be heading in a direction not significant to this body of work (I will come back to them at a later time to see if there is any further development to be made). However the photographs and film that came from this work is invaluable, some of these photographs are my favourite pieces from this research and I intend to develop the photography through the major project work to come.

These next pieces came from a desire to make an artist's book that looked at perception, continuing to use the braille motif, I changed a standard visual eye test (as seen in all opticians) into braille. These prints were the results.

The artist's book that resulted is my favourite so far, it shows a blind (no ink) print opposite a mirror, so it can be read forwards, as in a proper opticians eye test. The real joy of using braille is that it can only be read by a selected few and if turned around or embossed rather than protruded it cannot be read. It works as a juxtaposition of perceptions of the visual and tatile for a seeing person such as myself.