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literaturegeek.bsky.social
Amanda Wyatt! Visconti
@literaturegeek.bsky.social
9K followers 5K following 1.4K posts
@ScholarsLab Director ✨💻📚🏳️‍🌈 (personal acct 🙃)
Just+joyful, critical+creative tech & culture

*DIY scholcom: letterpress+zine+blog+code
*Book-adjacent data+making
*Experimental/DH+library futures+community

3 !s in a hoodie
Dr! 🏳️‍⚧️ They/Them
AmandaVisconti.com
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literaturegeek.bsky.social
Ooh, I do like that! I even have a printing block for it already:
Photo of a letterpress printing block (cut) that's been printed in deep purple ink on white paper; it says "EXTRA" on a wavy purple banner
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 AM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
Thanks @plach.bsky.social! for letting @scholarslab.bsky.social display a poster of her 1st yearlong data physicalization: embroidery+beading representing her insomnia, wakefulness, sleep over the course of 2024 (check her #DHmakes posts for 2025's version, w/iterated method+data granularity)
Photo of a wall exhibit label and poster showing a photograph of Pam Lach's 2024 "Sleep/Insomnia Data Physicalization", a tight circular spiral of embroidered Z's in white and various blue threads, with orange and clear beads, on a black-blue galaxy-ish fabric background. The poster text says "Sleep/Insomnia Data Physicalization / By Pamella Lach (2024) / A yearlong, embroidered visualization of personal data: nightly sleep amounts (thread color) & types of wakefulness/insomnia (bead color)." Exhibit label text in next photo's alt text. Photo of an exhibit label that says: "#DHmakes Sleep/Insomnia Data Physicalization Pamella Lach 2024 Materials: thread, fabric, beads Methods: embroidery, physical data visualization The photographed embroidery on this poster is a data "physicalization": data visualized via physical means, such as this project's hand-embroidered fabric. Data artist & digital humanities scholar Pamella Lach added stitches throughout 2024, tracking the entire year's data on her sleep & insomnia. Thread color represents quantities of sleep; bead color represents type of wakefulness and insomnia. A 2025 version builds on this method with added complexity & granularity of how data was captured & how those details are represented visually. "#DHmakes" is both a hashtag & a community of scholarly practice. On social media, folks in digital humanities, libraries, academia, and other learning-work who craft or make use the tag to share everything from failed first attempts at new hobby methods, to advanced professional work. Beyond social media, #DHmakes is a community that's published peer-reviewed journal articles, run scholarly conference panels & workshops, hosted a public methodological talk series, built a group project representing many kinds of data art & craft, & more. Read more about #DHmakes & how to get involved via the QR code. Scholars' Lab's Makerspace can help you explore making, crafts, & building-both as means of teaching & research, and for pleasure, advocacy, & art."
November 23, 2025 at 3:10 PM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
Seth Rockman: 'Experiential research as a method for IDing questions you didn’t know to ask, rather than providing answers you wouldn’t have had...an experiential research method lets us envision more things we want to know about the past' (experiential=do something the way it was done in the past)
Screenshot of text from an interview answer by Seth Rockman: " SR: There are so many problems with transcending our subjectivities; so many difficulties when encountering the violence that structured a past that can't and shouldn't be reproduced or approximated. And that creates a real barrier. But at the same time, as historians, we are committed to inhabiting other bodies and living in other times and making sense of universes that don't make sense in our own. Our craft requires imagining ourselves across differences of cosmology and spirituality, of material conditions, of the day-to-day experiences of survival. But this gets ever more difficult when our subjects lived on the margins of the societies whose structures of exploitation and exclusion endure to the present day. That's why I've been thinking about experiential research as a method for identifying questions that you didn't know to ask, rather than providing answers that you wouldn't have had otherwise. For example, I've been doing some dyeing projects with my undergraduates in a class called "A Textile History of Atlantic Slavery," and what we stress in that class is, No, you are not pretending to be a West African woman in 1774. No, you're not pretending to be an enslaved woman on a South Carolina plantation in 1854. You are yourself, you are now, and you're up to your elbows in a pot of really cold water. When students are toting buckets of water to rinse their fabrics, they realize that water is very heavy. And the questions then follow: How did people in the past move water? How did their backs and bodies experience this work? Who was doing this kind of work? We are then prompted to ask questions about infrastructure, about bodily experience, about the gendered division of labor. Once we're asking these kinds of questions, then we can go searching for the answers. An archival record might not prompt us to pose these questions. An experiential research method allows us to envision more things that we…
November 22, 2025 at 1:32 PM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
Very Extra broadsides are my favorite letterpress genre to make. You can tell this one isn't done yet from there still being significant white space. (Uses my recent acrylic PC & wood skeleton lasercut blocks, which both came out well, as well as my wood Luddite lasercut block) #DHmakes
Photo of a letterpress print on white paper with green and black ink. It says "VAPORWARE pointing out the (tech) emperor has no clothes >:c since (well before) 1811 / Luddites didn't "fear technology", they broke the machines that allowed the rich to enshittify livelihoods/ who's your tech for? / caution: no tech's adoption is inevitable (lol blockchain) / glitch their cistems" and is decorated with a historical Luddite, dancing skeleton kicking a computer, and diverting trying to sell you things from inside his trenchcoat (the things are three $ symbols and a poison symbol)
November 21, 2025 at 7:43 PM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
Don't know if this is useful but I've been wondering re:replicating my home DIY SAD lamp array (the yellow orange lanterns) to improve our dim printshop. "Lumenator" brings up multiple folks who tested lumens/distance (so you don't have to sit 12" from bulbs=migraines) & least cost
Photo of a home office where a stand of string lights has been fitted with bright LED bulbs and paper yellow and orange lanterns to make a DIY SAD lamp array
November 21, 2025 at 1:38 PM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
Lasercut the Cooper Black Yarn font in the correct direction, 2 sizes @'s and #'s since none of those in our printshop, & glued everything up to very-near-typehigh. Going to test printing today. #DHmakes
Photo of orange acrylic lasercut sheets being glued and clamped to frosted acrylic mounts of the same size, to raise them to printing type high. One is a 5.5" wide pointing hand, and the other says "technology" (reflected backwards) in a bubbly font Photo of orange acrylic lasercut sheets being glued to frosted acrylic mounts of the same size, to raise them to printing type high. All are reflected backwards so they print the right direction. Shown are a solid 120pt Cooper Black capital A, an R and Y in similar but diagonally striped font, and a retro Mac icon image. Photo of orange acrylic lasercut sheets stacked on frosted acrylic mounts of the same size, to be glued together to raise them to printing type high. All are reflected backwards so they print the right direction. There's a mix of large Cooper Black letters and images such as a large pointing hand. Each suit on its own piece of blue paper to help keep the mounts of the same size together. Photo of orange acrylic lasercut sheets being glued to frosted acrylic mounts of the same size, to raise them to printing type high. All are reflected backwards so they print the right direction. Shown are a hashtag and an @ sign.
November 21, 2025 at 10:17 AM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
I did a couple bookmaking ones in this and it was nowhere near enough! (Btw, your printing work rocks)
Photo of a letterpress print made with wood and lead type on light brown chipboard, and a gradient of red yellow orange ink for the text. It says "Bookmakers & binders say all you fascists bound to lose / Justice hinges on us gathering / bind us together / leave no one behind". The word "hinges" is set diagonally off the word "justice" to look like a book hinging open
November 20, 2025 at 6:51 PM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
Personal goal of lasercutting increasingly large printers fists printing block, & increasing the count of the highest number of puns I've fit into a letterpress broadside
Photo of a lasercut neon orange piece of 5.5" x 2.5" acrylic, which has been lasercut to have a historical printers fist image (pointing hand) raised off it for printing. It is next to my hand for scale. In the background is a lasercutter slicing rectangles into clear acrylic.
November 20, 2025 at 3:00 PM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
It's 120pt(!) Cooper Black with diagonal striping that can connect to the bit trailing off a ball-of-yarn image block (for @quinnanya.me's YarnLab). Recutting tomorrow, but I guess this allows printing a neat reflected letters effect alongside the legible version? #DHmakes
Photo of lasercut frosted and clear red acrylic movable type, using a 120pt Cooper Black font where done if the letters have a diagonal striping effect added to match the width of the yarn coming off the yarn ball in a corresponding image printing block. The text says "YarnLab" but has been accidentally lasercut right-reading, messing it will print backwards Side photo of lasercut frosted and clear red acrylic movable type, using a 120pt Cooper Black font where done if the letters have a diagonal striping effect added to match the width of the yarn coming off the yarn ball in a corresponding image printing block. The text says "YarnLab" but has been accidentally lasercut right-reading, messing it will print backwards. This version of the photo shows the frosted clear acrylic layers the type is mounted on.
November 19, 2025 at 10:08 PM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
And also a Portland Frog Hero hat made by @quinnanya.me & necklaces w/ @queermedieval.bsky.social's art lasercut by Quinn! (Wishing it were easier for everyone to send one another art & craft & zines more often, because what a joy)
Photo of a winter hat knit that looks like a frog head, by Quinn Dombrowski, in a gradient-greens yarn and white and black yarn for eyeballs; under a pile of lasercut wood necklaces by Quinn lasercut with @queermedieval.bsky.social's Portland Frog Hero art
November 19, 2025 at 8:17 AM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
Very good mail day: @ryancordell.org @deliadraws.bsky.social & other @skeuomorphpress.org students' gorgeous handmade (book, letterpress, illustrations>lino) edition of Ursula K Le Guin's "A Rant about 'Technology'" #DHmakes Some poster versions from the book may still be available? (link in QT)
Photo of a letterpress print by Skeuomorph Press, on white paper with black ink text on an orange background of a giant flame rising from multiple lit matches. It says "'TECHNOLOGY IS THE ACTIVE HUMAN INTERFACE WITH THE MATERIAL WORLD - URSULA K. LE GUIN" Photo of a letterpress print book cover by Skeuomorph Press, on white paper with black ink text on an orange background of a giant flame rising from multiple lit matches. It says "A Rant About Technology" Photo of a letterpress print book back cover by Skeuomorph Press, on white paper with black ink text on a charcoal background image of a giant flame rising from multiple lit matches. It says "A Rant About 'Technology' / Ursula K. Le Guin"
November 18, 2025 at 11:13 PM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
Traditional letterpress blocking to hold type in place vs pressure from the press (wood block "furniture", key-expanded quoin, strips of wood and lead=reglets & leading, positive lockup bar tightens at bottom) vs sometimes strong magnets are enough (eg wood type or few words in big lead type):
Photo of letterpress type arranged on a metal printing press bed with green ink on the press rollers and type. The type is naturally horizontally backwards, but says "maybe it's just... vaporware??? luddites pointing out the (tech) emperor has no clothes since (well before) 1811 / who's your tech" Photo of green-inked letterpress lead type arranged on a paper-covered metal printing press bed. The type is naturally horizontally backwards, but says "no tech's adoption is inevitable / potentials / profit" and is held in place with black magnets. The paper has pen outlines and notes showing where type was printed to the final sheets was when those earlier printing passes were printed
November 18, 2025 at 9:09 AM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
Traditional letterpress blocking to hold type in place vs pressure from the press (wood block "furniture", key-expanded quoin, strips of wood and lead=reglets & leading, positive lockup bar tightens at bottom) vs sometimes strong magnets are enough (eg wood type or few words in big lead type):
Photo of letterpress type arranged on a metal printing press bed with green ink on the press rollers and type. The type is naturally horizontally backwards, but says "maybe it's just... vaporware??? luddites pointing out the (tech) emperor has no clothes since (well before) 1811 / who's your tech" Photo of green-inked letterpress lead type arranged on a paper-covered metal printing press bed. The type is naturally horizontally backwards, but says "no tech's adoption is inevitable / potentials / profit" and is held in place with black magnets. The paper has pen outlines and notes showing where type was printed to the final sheets was when those earlier printing passes were printed
November 18, 2025 at 9:08 AM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
Working on a new print for the Luddite block. A galley full of 72pt Cooper Black lead type is heavy! #DHmakes
Closeup photo of part of a half-figure letterpress print on white paper with green ink. It says "maybe it's just...vaporwarw??? luddites: pointing out the (tech) emperor has no clothes..." with a frowny emoticon made from a sideways v, colon, and lowercase c; the "i" in "luddite" made from a printers fist/pointing hand image pointing at a circle; and "judicious use" of a very round thick font (Cooper Black) Photo of a letterpress print on white papers with blue and bright red ink, showing a historical image of a Luddite "general" in blue overlaid with glitched red (left side) and just printed in red (right side) Photo of a drying line with clothespins hung with many drying paper prints on white and cream papers Photo (digitally flipped for readability) of a metal galley tray packed with a mix of wood and lead type, some of it readable words and some missing enough letters to can't tell what it says. Readable words include "vaporware / pointing out the tech emperor has no clothes since 1811"
November 17, 2025 at 10:52 PM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
Are you looking for this area of the press? I can get photos of Provisional Press (cylinder tabletop press, rollers are just for pressure—ink w/brayer & paper sits on type rather than around cylinder) and BookBeetle (screw press so closest to what you're doing, I think?) too if that's helpful
Photo of a Vandercook press bed and inked rollers, showing a printing block held in place by magnets and a lockup bar
November 16, 2025 at 1:00 PM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
My first try at lasercutting a Luddite printing block back in spring (below) didn’t turn out well—rough & burnt wood; and bottom of block was uneven, so I couldn’t get an even print. It is nice to notice that I’ve learned things since then about lasercutting & about printing.
Photo of a letterpress print on white paper with green ink. It says "critical tech! no 'innovation' serving profit over people" next to a historical image of a beckoning "Luddite general", which has several areas that did not print well Photo of a letterpress block lasercut badly on wood, digitally flipped for readability. It says "critical tech! no 'innovation' serving profit over people" next to a historical image of a beckoning "Luddite general". The faces of the letters and image are visibly singed and the image is unclear
November 16, 2025 at 12:15 PM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
More zines (w/links where their creators offer them for free reading) at ZineBakery.com, +links to jump into different parts of the 100s of zines in the catalog: social justice, feminist tech, DH, tutorials, collective action, queer, GLAM, disability justice, & more 📚 Also a DH zine research blog! 💻
Screenshot of colorful buttons on the ZineBakery.com website that links to various subsections of the Zine Bakery catalog. The buttons have this text: all social justice zines w/free print+share zines on how to act, advocate, resist digital archiving, safety, privacy for activists tech knowledges (feminist tech digital humanities better together: community & collective solidarity better futures: social justice global authors + topics disability justice + accessibility 2SLGBTQIA+ creative making & crafting learn a thing teaching & pedagogy zines about zines Libraries, archives, cultural memory work "homemade" & "bakeshop" zines (mine!)
November 15, 2025 at 10:56 PM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
This makes a lot of sense to me (I recently found gently-used 72pt Cooper Black type after searching for months)
Closeup photo of 72pt Cooper Black lead type in a box, showing its heavy bubbly form Photo of 72pt Cooper Black lead type in a box, next to a second box labeled with that info and containing the rest of the type. A hand is in the photo for scale; 72pt Cooper Black is a roughly tip of thumb to first thumb joint in length.
November 15, 2025 at 9:25 PM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
My lasercut 9" Luddite block printed well—the surrounding wood grain looks so good I didn't even need to mask it out of the print. (Never know what to expect the print to look like when cutting w/a different material or settings)
Photo of a letterpress print on white paper with navy blue ink, showing a 9" tall image from a historical painting of a "Luddite General", a man in a 19th-century dress beckoning onward, surrounded by a light background of vertical wood grain lines. The print is held up by a hand against the side of a gray metal Vandercook press next to its "this machine kills fascists" sticker Photo of a letterpress printing wood block inked in navy a printing press bed, showing a 9" tall image from a historical painting of a "Luddite General", a man in a 19th-century dress beckoning onward Photo of a letterpress print on different white paper with navy blue ink, showing a 9" tall image from a historical painting of a "Luddite General", a man in a 19th-century dress beckoning onward, surrounded by a light background of vertical wood grain lines.
November 15, 2025 at 1:33 PM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
Goudy, goudy! New printshop typecase labels & type finder I created (a 15-page list of just type distributed in standard job cases, not even all the type Virginia Book Arts has?!) have landed (thanks to VBA colleagues for applying labels & helping proof inventory updates):
This photo shows just cases labeled for the "Goudy" font, which is why I made a "goody"/"Goudy" pun in my tweet. Photo of a cabinet full of letterpress wooden typecases, with eye levels dating the font, size, and cabinet/case ID. Photo of a spread of laminated pages listing Virginia Book Arts' type collection in a table showing font, size, and cabinet/case IDs for where to find them. Photo of a cabinet full of letterpress wooden and metal typecases, with eye levels dating the font, size, and cabinet/case ID. Fonts shown include Belair, Thompson Quill, and Futura. Photo of a cabinet full of letterpress wooden and metal typecases, with eye levels dating the font, size, and cabinet/case ID. Fonts shown include Centaur, Arrighi, and Shaded.
November 14, 2025 at 1:06 PM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
In the spirit of #DHfails, I also made an acrylic plate showing a Vandercook press w/melt+noise+likely won't print well. The acrylic triangles I cut (for gluing to a board to print confetti texture backgrounds for letterpress) are pretty, though, bc neon translucent acrylic is always pretty
Photo of a laser etched acrylic sheet showing the image of a Vandercook press, with some melting and uneven areas that will probably make it print badly Photo of a hand holding a baggie full of tiny neon shards (acrylic triangles cut with a lasercutter from neon transparent acrylic in various colors)
November 13, 2025 at 11:34 PM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
More lasercut print blocks I made: historical dancing skeleton! Beckoning Luddite leaders! #DHmakes
Photo of a wood block cut so an image of a historical "danse macabre" style dancing skeleton cavorts, raised from its surface, for printing Photo of two 9" tall bamboo boards that have each been lasercut to show a historical image of a beckoning Luddite leader; one is raised from the surface and one is inset
November 13, 2025 at 11:34 PM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
Thanks also to @elikaortega.bsky.social for helping us display the cover of her book "Binding Media: Hybrid print-digital literature from across the Americas"! Élika gave a fantastic talk for @scholarslab.bsky.social in '22 on literary & material experimentations via hybrid print-digital books.
A large poster version of the cover of Élika Ortega's book "Binding Media: Hybrid print-digital literature from across the Americas", on a white background with a large, pixelated, gradient yellow to red to purple mouse cursor series on top Photo of a wall hung with multiple posters and a banner. A large black cotton banner created by Francis Osid has appliqued felt letters, each in a different color creating an overall gradient effect. The letters spell "Make your pride part of history". The posters are the cover of Élika Ortega's book "Binding Media: Hybrid print-digital literature from across the Americas", on a white background with a large, pixelated, gradient yellow to red to purple mouse cursor series on top; the cover of the "Digital Futures of Graduate Studies in the Humanities" volume; and last year's Praxis Fellows research poster on analyzing archival university satire magazines.
November 13, 2025 at 5:34 PM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
New art in @scholarslab.bsky.social's Text Aisle! Huge thanks to #DHmakes colleague @fosis.bsky.social for letting us exhibit his bright & strong "Pride" banner in our public space ("Make your pride part of history"🌈):
Photo of a wall hung with multiple posters and a banner. A large black cotton banner created by Francis Osid has appliqued felt letters, each in a different color creating an overall gradient effect. The letters spell "Make your pride part of history". The posters are the cover of Élika Ortega's book "Binding Media: Hybrid print-digital literature from across the Americas", on a white background with a large, pixelated, gradient yellow to red to purple mouse cursor series on top; the cover of the "Digital Futures of Graduate Studies in the Humanities" volume; and last year's Praxis Fellows research poster on analyzing archival university satire magazines. Closeup photo on a large black cotton banner created by Francis Osid has appliqued felt letters, each in a different color creating an overall gradient effect. The letters spell "Make your pride part of history". Photo of a museum exhibit label that says: "Pride 2025 Francis Osis, queer archivist & artist living in Glasgow, Scotland Materials: felt & cotton Methods: hand appliqué & machine sewing This banner was made in a feverish last minute scramble for West Lothian's 10th anniversary Pride, which the West Lothian Council Museums & Archives Services attended to engage with the local community & to encourage donations to the service so their history could be told. In addition to his archival expertise, Francis Osis holds a Ph.D. in history of medicine, and creates textile and fibre based art including clothes, quilts, and embroideries."
November 13, 2025 at 5:34 PM
literaturegeek.bsky.social
Seen at @virginiabookarts.bsky.social, Liz Schneiders & students' printing using just tetrapaks (eg broth & oat milks cartons!) & tiny plastic Sizzix craft/scrapbooker presses or etching presses #DHmakes
Photo of a red brick wall displaying a 4 x 4 grid of small (about 3" square) aqua and black art prints of trees, sea creatures, and more, under a title print that says "TetraPak Prints" Photo of a red brick wall displaying a long strip of material printed in aqua and black with the backwards words "TetraPak Prints"; a tab at the bottom of the strip says "LIFT to see back of printing plate" Photo of a red brick wall displaying a long strip of material printed in aqua and black with the backwards words "TetraPak Prints"; a tab at the bottom of the strip says "LIFT to see back of printing plate" and has been lifted to show the back of that printing plate is just a strip of chicken broth carton material Photo of an exhibit label on a red brick wall. It says "Tetra Pak Printmaking The following sampling of prints were made by visitors to our Book Arts Demonstration Day held during the Virginia Festival of the Book in March of 2025. We made printing plates cut out of Tetra Pak, a material commonly used for packaging food such as broth, oat milk, soups and more. Guests were invited to "draw" on a piece of Tetra Pak with a pointed awl. Each plate was then inked, wiped clean of excess ink, and run through a small etching press with a dampened sheet of watercolor paper to produce a print. Tetra Pak printing has become quite popular as a fast, affordable and eco-friendly method of printmaking. Look for classes and demos at Virginia Book Arts in the coming year."
November 13, 2025 at 11:07 AM