Type over Time

Exhibited for the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre Exposé Program from the 19th of Sept to the 1st of Nov 2015 as part of the ‘Play for Time’ exhibition by Damian Castaldi and Solange Kershaw.

The installation juxtaposes an old style prepared typewriter with a screen projection and webcam. Typing on the typewriter projects text and builds the facial image of the person typing. The visitor becomes the author and three technologies, from three distinct time periods come together to produce the visitor’s (pseudo) autobiographical work. A ‘self-portrait’ with a difference is created as the visitor types over time. 

Interaction: If you stand at the typewriter a small camera mounted above the typewriter will capture your immediate facial expression. When you start typing on the typewriter the image of your face will fill and move with the letters and words of your text.
Note: Please be gentle on the old typewriter it is a 1948 antique. Manually return your lines (by pushing the left hand arm inwards) at the end of each line of text.

To produce this work we used a USB Typewriter Conversion Kit from Jack Zylkin in Philadelphia, a 1948 Royal Quiet Deluxe model portable typewriter (the typewriter of choice by Ernest Hemingway), a MiniMac computer running an openFrameworks script, webcamMultiFaceOcv and an Epson Projector EB-W12.

Blue Mountains Cultural Centre Exposé Program
Installation booth
The 1948 Royal De Luxe model portable typewriter