melancholy wrote:Considering the requirements of your project, I don't think the look of the machine is really that necessary.
Yes and no. It's a mixed-media project. The core is a six page short story spanning the 20th Century (sort of an autobiography of the century as a person), with each page corresponding to a different span of years (and also a different stage of life) and written using period-appropriate tools. The first page will be written with a fountain pen, the second with my antique typewriter, the third with a more recent electric typewriter, the fourth with an old black-and-white Macintosh, and the fifth as an AOL Homepage-style HTML document. I'll have a photograph of each page being written, then a photo of each finished page with the tool used to create it.
Each page is also going to be photographed being written on said tools, and--if I can get funding for it--a gallery display showing each page being delivered in the important new medium of the era.
The final display will really have three components:
1. the actual text, compiled from their different printing methods.
2. the photos, two for each page--one of the creation process, one of the finished product and tool
3. and there will be the broadcast method: the first page played back on wax cylinder, displayed on a turn-of-the-century oak and iron school desk. The second page will be broadcast via low power AM transmitter to a 1930s vacuum tube radio. The typed page and all attendant materials will be arranged on an art deco writing desk. A grainy video presentation of the third page will be recorded and transmitted to a monochrome 1950s television, and the written page and all attendant materials will be displayed on a period-appropriate chrome and laminate table. A VHS recording will be made of a presentation of the fourth page, and played back via vintage VHS camera to a period-appropriate television set. The typed page and all attendant equipment will be arranged on a painted steel and faux-wood laminate desk, in a cubicle-like environment. A reading of the fifth page will be played back via cellular phone, with the typed page emerging from a dot matrix printer connected to an early model Macintosh computer. The document will be displayed onscreen in an editor, and all equipment will be arranged on an inexpensive pressboard computer desk. The sixth and final page will be displayed as an unpolished HTML website, displayed onscreen in a browser on a computer running Windows 95. A printed copy of the page will emerge from an inkjet printer, and all equipment will be displayed on an Ikea self-assembled computer desk.
Of course, if I can't get funding for the gallery presentation, I'll just scale it back to the pages and photos, without the broadcast & display aspect. Maybe I'll just make audio and video recordings normally and run them through filters (fuzzy b/w for 50s, VHS style for 70s, etc.) and build it all into a website.
