This article examines the creative research undertaken by Edwin Pickstone and Paul Maguire, in conversation with Frances Robertson. Edwin and Paul’s exploration of how ‘text events’ can become ‘sound events’ came from an initial starting point considering the history of print technology and graphic design within circuits of knowledge and invention. Their collaboration began with the Glasgow
School of Art (GSA), School of Design Research Cluster project The Visible Word, based in GSA’s Caseroom (Letterpress collection), and has run from June 2022.
This interview offers a commentary on work in progress from June 2022 to the present. Since the Visible Word group exhibition in September 2023 their work has continued to develop independently, but it remains poised between the materials and processes of typography and sound composition, informed by both and developing new insights through cross-medium transcoding. There is ambition to realise an album of audio recordings made using the software tool created through the research partnership.

Monotype is a casting system for moveable metal type using a keyboard, punch-tape and matrix (mould). Patented in 1885, this revolutionary technology greatly improved the speed and often quality, of typesetting for Letterpress printing. Due to the complexity of the Monotype system, it is almost impossible to take a punch-tape from an unknown printing house and decode the text which has been encoded onto it. There are approximately 30,000 possible arrangements of the moulds which correspond to the holes punched in the tape according to the needs of the job at hand.

Inspired by these encrypted patterns of binary holes, this custom software application maps and transcodes the language of mechanical typesetting into musical space. The project takes cues from early binary inputting systems for electronic music equipment such as RCA Electronic Music Synthesizer of the 1960's (developed with Columbia and Princeton Universities) at a time when punch card technologies and Letterpress itself were just beginning to phase out of commercial use. The software reads input text and implements various mappings including the numbers associated with traditional 'lay of the case', frequency of letter use, word aggregates. Ultimately these numbers are used to generate pitches and durations of notes as MIDI events which are used to trigger external synthesisers. Letters and words become sounds and spaces are silence. Texts with varying typeset details express their inner musicality – body copy rhythm, poetic meter and structure.

The work was created in Processing using the MIDIbus Library and would not be possible without the generous support of the Open Source community.