Composing Whitman: Mapping Typography

Kuester, Keely

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117893 Copy

Description

Title

Composing Whitman: Mapping Typography

Author(s)

Kuester, Keely

Issue Date

2023

Keyword(s)

• Image of Research
• English
• Walt Whitman

Abstract

First Place Winner of the 2023 Image of Research - UR Edition Composing Whitman makes visual the paths carved through space by the human hand: from letter to w0rd, from chaos to meaning. While setting movable type at Skeuomorph Press, my attention was drawn to the patterns certain words made as I moved my hands from one letter to another. Anyone setting the word “the” using a California Job Case, for example, begins down at ‘t,’ moves up to ‘h,’ and over to ‘e.’ Across time, any compositor forming a given word, sentence, or entire poem has executed roughly the same paths through space. Composing Whitman visually charts the typographical choreography of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Whitman, a compositor himself, is an especially compelling example for visualizing the practice of typesetting because he hand typeset his first edition of Leaves (1855). Using JavaScript, I mapped each box of a standard California Job Case (in which “sorts” of lead type are stored) to a character. The result outputs the journey from letter to letter within the case, including the spacing between words. This mapping allows us to see Whitman’s own movements during typesetting, echoed in the present by any individual setting his work, giving even individuals without access to a print shop a sense of the historic practice of typesetting.

Type of Resource

• Text
• Image

Language

en

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