old tech

keeping on with the explorations.brought out a screen flashed with my beloved print gocco.

guys, i shleped it around akiba on my first trip to japan.my tokyo frined took me there but didn't want to have anything to do with the situation, the purchase and the whatevers. being japanese she abstained from something she wasn't familiar with. i vaguely remember akiba then other than it was extremely noisy, all the stores with blaring loudspeakers each one advertising a different thing with a different tune.flash forward and on my second trip i realized that i had visited the otaku paradise in the heydays in early 90's. nothing to do with the civilised over turisty place nowadays.

i still have usable old flashed screens.

the problem with gocco is the consumables, the bulbs are not found anywhere,the inks are no big deal as you can swing it with other heavy body inks. i need to make friends with a tatooer, as they use a similar technology to make tat flashes.surface designers know them as thermo-fax.

or you can spend your cash buying a risograph printer which is a print gocco on steroids.full circle oi?

all those wonderful pre burst of the bubble gadgets that went out of production. brother knitting machines case point.

 

proof of concept: thickened bengara on  taninn stamped heavy cotton

the print didn't come out crisp bcse of the thick weave cloth. to be tried on a tight woven cloth.

neki desu 

 

debugging and developing

all tied up. now comes the debugging part.
have been  doing computer work too.

developing and studying pegplans.working on different varriations

     

also developing the image

     

 and the masters for printing using the print gocco, such great simple technology.we are still crying over its demise. but as the japanese live and work one century ahead of the rest when the products start catching up and becoming mainstream they are already moving on. think of the brother home knitting machines.

anyhow a brief summary of the process
make a photocopy of your image,  place it on the pad.place the master with the blue filter-to avoid scorching-in front of the master which is a heat sensitive mesh

 

place two light bulbs on the lamp housing head and  place it on the machine.

  

push down and the bulbs will flash producing light and heat and thus transferring the carbon of the photocopy and printing the image on the mesh

the image transferred to the mesh. it can be printed on to any medium; paper, textiles,whatever you like. the inks are oily and very tacky, but i have printed successfully using thickened dyes and textile paints.

now, don't tell me the demise of print gocco was not a tragedy.

neki desu

book of old linen

This post is like a photo essay, i had never posted so many photos in one post.
The book is made from the old linen pillow case i found at my mother in law's. There was no way i was going to discard such wonderful fabric, the kind of linen you can't find anymore. From beginning to end the project was very pleasant, it all came together almost without thinking.

i wanted something coquettish and frivolous as a cover and was lucky to find the dotted paper. It was laminated to previously stitched lutradur and the covers were glued to the first and last flaps.
The linen was stitched with white silk thread and i wanted the stitches to be a story on their own, yet complementing the bits of silk shibori.
Retrospectively i see a lot of my mother in law in it. Perhaps i'll keep on with a series of books about her.

But i'm also kidding myself. i'm having problems with a cover for another book and i'm procrastinating tyeing 1200knots :( Help!!! i need a mantra.

Turning a page here. i found that Nehoc in Australia has a Print Gocco like printing kit.This is interesting as the Gocco suplies are getting scarcer. And they ship internationally.
There's light ahead for those of us who are still crying over Gocco's demise.

neki desu


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discombobulated

Last year around my birthday i was doing deco-printing.
http://amovablefeast.blogspot.com/2008/03/screen-printing-fun.htm
The fabric came out nicely and i overprinted a left over square with a print gocco master, my beloved "purinto gocco"that i had hauled all the way from Japan. i was testing fluorescent pigments and wanted to see their printability.

Results: nice; lovely pink fluo motifs but somewhat discombobulated (lovely puzzling word, there is no combobulate).
Or as husband- san, the resident critic, said "it's very abstract (snicker,snicker)":)
The fabric needed a unifying element desperately and so it was put down to rest.Yesterday the weather was hot and dry and i brought out a thermofax screen and tried some more over printing with a there's not much to lose attitude. Coincidentally the thermofax and print gocco technology are the same, so it is quite surprising that Riso wants to discontinue the gocco .

Results:

the linear elements combobulate(ha!ha!) the fabric.

i'm looking forward to more combobulation :)

BTW. i just became a fan of the gocco page on Facebook.

neki desu


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screen printing fun

During the recent limping phase it was somewhat difficult to walk, but stand up i could. And so i did.Had lots of fun printing this cotton duck fabric that will hopefully be turned into a tote bag.
Deconstructed screen printing aka breakdown printing is very liberating. There's really no way you can wreck a piece of fabric. One way or another it gets salvaged.

This was a leftover piece which i stamped using a Print Gocco master and some thickened pigment. i like how pigments behave so i foresee more experimenting with them.

Sorry for the colors as they came out a bit washed out and no PS could spunk them. It's the light, as it has been cloudy lately.

neki desu