Wow

September 10, 2004 11:19 PM

One cool thing to have come out of all the typewriter discussion going on these days.
posted by delmoi (21 comments total)

Obvious forgery.
posted by iamck at 11:21 PM on September 10, 2004

Damn right wow.
posted by kenko at 11:28 PM on September 10, 2004

incredible!
posted by Satapher at 12:21 AM on September 11, 2004

pretty goddamn amazing.
posted by sklero at 3:04 AM on September 11, 2004

wish there were some closeups.
posted by sklero at 3:05 AM on September 11, 2004

That is insane. I am in genuine awe.
posted by chicobangs at 3:15 AM on September 11, 2004

Excellent.
posted by rushmc at 3:40 AM on September 11, 2004

Godsmacked. Thanks del.
posted by squealy at 4:24 AM on September 11, 2004

Brilliant.
posted by ColdChef at 4:41 AM on September 11, 2004

Gimmicky.
posted by pjdoland at 4:59 AM on September 11, 2004

Nice to see that some clouds still have silver linings.
posted by briank at 5:00 AM on September 11, 2004

delmoi finds a rose growing in the bed of weeds.
posted by caddis at 5:02 AM on September 11, 2004

iamck posted that forgery call pretty quickly... does he have some inside dope?
posted by mwhybark at 10:50 AM on September 11, 2004

I think he was making a joke, mwhybark. The link is to a copy of the Mona Lisa. Get it? Ha ha?

Regardless, this is amazing. Thanks, delmoi.
posted by Grod at 11:38 AM on September 11, 2004

as was I. the countercharges agin LGF's forgery-call center on his posting the analysis within minutes or seconds of the end of 60 Minutes.
posted by mwhybark at 11:46 AM on September 11, 2004

... but if you have to explain a joke ....
posted by mwhybark at 11:46 AM on September 11, 2004

It's pretty amazing and it just goes to show how used to computers we are now.
posted by floanna at 3:47 PM on September 11, 2004

I wonder what he could have done with a Selectric Composer.

Or, in all seriousness, if he'd be taught VT-100 escape sequences. I remember DEC's "Christmas Cards" for the VT-100s.
posted by eriko at 6:04 PM on September 11, 2004

I'd love to see some close-ups, too, to get a sense of how he accomplishes this stuff technically. Looking at Paul's Dog, it looks like he's maybe rolling the paper through at different angles and using straight line (Dash? Underscore?) and parenthesis characters to get the different lines, so to draw just one line would be a difficult, time-consuming task--to make an entire picture, vastly more so. The mind boggles!
posted by arto at 7:02 PM on September 11, 2004

Composer? I would think not.

I used to know guys who did typewriter art in college, in the early '80s. nothing anywhere *near* this sophisticated. Not in the same state. Not in the same region. But still -- art, nonetheless.

They mostly used manuals. One used an electric; but not a Selectric. Those were too high-rent back then. Having used Selectrics and Wheelwriters a lot, I'm thinking that the best tool for this kind of thing is probably a good, well-maintained manual, like my old Royal institutional model (that my mother pushed into the church auction as soon as I was out of the house, grrrr.....). That would give you the capability to modulate your stroke and exploit partial backspacing.

What always floors me about this kind of thing is the vision it requires. I mean, who could even imagine how to do this? I didn't; for me, typewriters were for *writing* ... how mundane...
posted by lodurr at 7:36 PM on September 11, 2004

You're joking, right? I guess those TV ads are correct.
posted by HTuttle at 9:10 PM on September 11, 2004