The result of letterpress ASCII is so satisfying. After 40+ hours of work, I can finally see the product of it. It took me 6 days to assemble the character and 1 day to scrutinise before printing. I was about to add text over it to make it the whole meme but honestly, this process is so slow that I don’t think I can do that in time.

Even though it is not my original intention, this process feels more like it is about the pixelisation of image. Indeed, there is a lot of transcription going on that has to do with handling an image.

To transcribe the digital image to letterpress, there were a lot of adjustments been done before even starting to gather the lead fonts.

First, the resolution was completely determined by the availability of the letterpress workshop. The first draft of the ASCII was about 120 x 28 chatacters in dimension

After doing the word count and consult about it with Helen, there was no way I could have 900 lead fonts of the same glyphs in a monospace case. I adjusted it a few times and eventually settled on 80 x 22 character wide.

However, resolution is not the only limitation. The most abudant monospace oramental fonts was only available in the size of 12 pt. So I am also locked in this size.

And eventually, I have to estimate the avialable font and make adujustments for adaptaions. For example, the most used glyph in the ASCII was @. And there was no way there would be this many for me to use. I substituted it with the floral art deco.

I used contiuous colons [“””””] to subtitue long sequence of [*****], but still I ran out of it and had to use the index number.

I see this is a for of text as image. So maybe for next I should look further into it.

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“The poor image is no longer about the real
thing the originary original. Instead, it is about its own real conditions of existence: about swarm circulation, digital dispersion, fractured
and flexible temporalities. It is about defiance
and appropriation just as it is about conformism
and exploitation. “

In Defense of Poor Image, Hito Steyerl, 2012

The condition is that only CSM students can gain access to this letterpress workhop to reproduce such image in a mundane and laborous process. The jokes? The image processing?