I printed out new labels for my shop with art suggestions from Twitter and Instagram!! These labels will be on all orders going out so I hope y'all think they're cute ♥️♥️
»The photon that traverses the optical glass and alters the halides of the film is not really a substance and it does not produce an impact«, Henri van Lier writes. »It carries energy, but has no mass. Indeed, we can also see this when after sunbathing we carry the marks of the bathing suit, transforming us into photograms. The weightlessness of photons endows their inscriptions with a striking weightlessness, almost an immateriality. Tanning is not a form of make-up.«
When it comes to printing, as you might expect, things get ›heavy‹: with a thermal printer, it’s easy to turn ›weightless inscriptions‹ into materialized, yet even more abstract patterns. Roughly speaking, these marvelous machines ›translate‹ light information into heat. By ›molding‹ or ›melting‹ the darker areas of the image out of the paper’s thermochromic coating, revealing the black hue, the parts of the film that were previously struck the least by photons become, of all things, the darkest and ›hottest‹ spots of the thermal print. At the same time, by reducing the information encoded in the film grain to a rather coarse grid, the printer stages a choreography of hot, dancing dark dots that both fuel and frustrate our inescapable desire to see things clearly.
Bought my partner a thermal printer for Christmas to make stickers and print receipts and whatever; we immediately both thought: gameboy printer.
It looks even a little like a modern version of the gameboy printer. If I knew where mine was I’d pull it out for comparison, but anyway.
I decided the best way to bring this whole thing together was to actually take some pictures with gameboy camera and print them, so that’s what I did.
Emulating gameboy camera on my 3DS was extremely simple, and using some handy homebrew ftp software I could wirelessly transfer files over to my phone where the new printer connects over bluetooth. It’s essentially the gameboy link cable but with extra steps.
So now I have these photos from gameboy camera, all I had to do was pass it to the printer. Let me tell you, the feeling of absolute joy we shared at having printed a picture we took with gameboy camera for the first time in probably 20 years? That was just 👌
Happy fucking holidays, everybody, I needed that dopamine today
Yeah... The second is a bit questionable and the only printer we have is a thermal one so it's inkless and only prints in black and white 😭 @khaosprism
Today I did some furniture arranging, so behold my 1997 win98 rig and ALPS micro dry MD2010R from 1996. Both getting a full strip and clean with retrobrite and a custom external psu for the printer (the R is for ressurected)
TRICK OR TREAT!! are you familiar with thermal printers :O??
Only vaguely, I was aware of arguably their most common use to print receipts, but after making Harry take apart a receipt printer researching this technology, I'm ready to report my findings!
by passing paper with a thermochromic coating over a print head consisting of heating elements. The coating turns black in the areas where it is heated, thus producing images and letters.
Was recently luckily enough to catch up with @inklesspen in person and able to witness the poetry printer in action!!! 🙌 She gave me a very fun demo of the different settings her configuration can run and I came away with a fist full of “receipts” covered w/ pretty words rather than woeful sums. A very cool project, makes me wish for a setup of my own.
The feel of thermal paper is exceptionally pleasing (so thin! so smooth!) and the form factor of a narrow strip of text inspiring. Sadly I really struggled to come up with a poetry request on the spot (still being rather... skeptical of the art form) but was able to fall back on an ask for Baudelaire (to which I remain thankful of @natrix-nembrotha for!)
The artifacts of font and scale and print settings are curious- definitely different than inkjet or laser. Admiring my little collection, I’m struck by how fun it would be to make scrolls with the method-- wound around tiny toothpicks, you could get quite a letter rolled up that’d fit the postal system’s 1/4″ limits....
Obviously, this technique is anything but ›immaterial‹. To some degree, it resembles etchings or even tattoo needles poking paint into the skin. The resulting images are unstable and (arguably) far less durable than an Instagram post. Nonetheless (and probably because of this), thermal prints are widely used for documentation purposes: Receipts for your recent purchases are printed on thermal paper. In the 1990s, there was even a Game Boy printer that allowed you to materialize and ›immortalize‹ your gaming adventures in snapshots or print out your favorite Pokemons. The prints were meant to be circulated. They were meant to ›stick‹. They didn’t. And they don’t. Sometimes they fade, sometimes the image darkens with further exposure to heat, obliterating the initial ›weightless photonic inscription‹. Then it’s not a local tan that disappears, but a strong and permanent burn over the entire body. Once again, the photographic image reveals its paradox double intent: the deep need to preserve and the deep need to forget at the same time.
As temperature rises, information is replaced by noise.