Turning trash into art is something we undoubtedly all admire. [Davis DeWitt] did just that with a massive mural made entirely from discarded receipt paper. [Davis] got lucky while doing some light dumpster diving, where he stumbled upon the box of thermal paper rolls. He saw the potential them and, armed with engineering skills and a rental-friendly approach, set out to create something original.
The journey began with a simple test: how long can a receipt be printed, continuously? With a maximum length of 10.5 feet per print, [Davis] designed an image for the mural using vector files to maintain a high resolution. The scale of the project was a challenge in itself, taking over 13 hours to render a single image at the necessary resolution for a mural of this size. The final piece is 30 foot (9.144 meters) wide and 11 foot (3.3528 meters) tall – a pretty conversational piece in anyone’s room – or shop, in [Davis]’ case.
Once the design was ready, the image was sliced into strips that matched the width of the receipt paper. Printing over 1,000 feet of paper wasn’t without its issues, so [Davis] designed a custom spool system to undo the curling of the receipts. Hanging the mural involved 3D-printed brackets and binder clips, allowing the strips to hang freely with a kinetic effect.
Though the thermal paper will fade over time, the beauty of this project lies in its adaptability—just reprint any faded strips. Want to see how it all came together? Watch the full process here.
The forbidden bisphenol A wallpaper
Exactly. And with that much of surface exposed, a lot of it probably ends up airborne.
i heard a while back that this thermal paper are carcinogens
Oh, I see someone else also got some CVS receipts. ;)
a copy of War and Peace with every purchase
The inevitable fading can be enhanced by splashing the paper with any number of mild organic solvents – some of them digestible and others used for household cleaning. HCl is particularly amusing, while acetone creates a profound statement. High proof spirits will go the other way, creating true vaporware as an expression of the ephemeral nature of art.
Sorry, I’ve been at https://artybollocks.com/ again…
Finds mint thermal paper, calls it trash and turns it into art… hardly recycling but whatever…
This is more interesting then duct-taping a banana to a wall.
(Which is apparently “worth” USD6.2M)
Maybe he should “Banksy” it, build a heater behind it, sell it and then turn on the heater.
Disco globe and high powered laser
I think I would have done “ASCII art” by printing rows of characters as pixels, but this is cool.