Auto Roto Font
Mark Hosking (2002)
Mark Hosking is an artist whose work exists in the gap between functioning object and sculpture. The Auto Roto Font is a new invention that evolved from a Book Works’ commission to make a new work in response to research in the Patents Collection of The British Library. The Auto Roto Font machine produces three-dimensional text cores that are four letters long. Therefore, ‘literature and science’ will become ‘lite ratu rean dsci ence’.
Auto Roto Font explains this principle whilst speculating on the use of these cores as building blocks for new architecture. The book incorporates a detailed specification for a patent application to be archived at The British Library, and features a new text by Edward Allington that ruminates on artists, patents, functionality and inventions. The book also includes an overview, Nine Inventions for Sustained Development, of other projects by Mark Hosking, including the Wassily A & E, an eight-piece conversion kit that transforms Marcel Breuer’s iconic Wassily chair into an emergency stretcher.
