Vacuum Frame – Construction Drawings

This dataset comprises six isometric construction drawings for the Vacuum Frame, a bespoke large-format contact printing instrument https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/39810/ developed for the production of the T-Series cyanotypes. https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/39812/ The drawings show the frame in two components: a subframe and a main frame, in open, closed, and operational states. The trestles are standard IKEA trestles. The main frame made from pine, enclosing an acrylic plate and a vacuum membrane, sealed together by a rubber strip compressed using clamps. The Vacuum Frame is a tool that facilitates UV exposure, as a reference to semiconductor manufacture, where light passing through a prepared surface leaves a trace on a light-sensitive substrate. In this sense it is not a conventional printmaking tool but a research instrument, designed to enact one of the project's central arguments: that the material logic of digital technology and the material logic of art production share a common origin. The dataset was produced as part of the practice-led research project We Are Supernova (MSCA Fellowship, Goldsmiths University of London).