hyperpress

I have always been interested in the etymology of some technical terms used in commercial printing/design processes — “Live” area, “Bleed”, and “Die”lines — though not always intended as metaphors, there is a certain poetic quality to these connections between printed matter and living bodies, materiality and mortality; what we touch and what we feel.

Traditional lithographic printing processes involve transferring ink from metal plates to paper, creating a separation between the “body” of the paper and the printed image. However, in 3D printing, the boundary between a page and the printed image becomes blurred as both the “body” and the printed image are created as sequential layers directly on a metal plate. This effectively eliminates the need for “bleed” and crop as alignment and trim tolerance issues are negated.

What does “Death” of print mean for 3D printing? How do you kill what does not (need) bleed?

Risograph book designed by gideon-jamie, Printed by Temporary Press.

CORPUS is a 3D-printed work that takes the form of a single-edition book, conceptualised, designed, and printed by graphic designer Darius Ou. This eponymous publication is a reproduction of that original work — a photocopied, bootleg-like reproduction that is also designed on its own terms. As a word that means both a dead body and a body of text, CORPUS is a response to the overmentioned “print is dead” catchphrase and questions what this means for non-traditional printing practices like 3D printing. Does “print” here refer to the method or material? Would a 3D-printed book then be considered dead even before it has a chance to live? This non-3D-printed edition paradoxically imagines the pre-existence or beforelife of CORPUS, which in the author’s words, explores the relationship between materiality and mortality, dimensionality and causality, and the afterlife of the codex.

Available for purchase here