SELF TYPING MACHINES
Lorraine Oades with Martin Peach (CA)
Two adapted electronic typewriters communicate with one another autonomously, without the aid of the human hand. As the keys move up and down, the typewriter mechanisms are engaged as if someone were actually typing.
In addition to being typed out on the page, messages are displayed on a low-resolution LED display, making them visible to onlookers as they are being typed out, letter by letter.
The typewriters send messages to one another, or a visitor can sit at one machine and the other will respond to their questions.
The script for Self Typing Machines is based on philosophical, literary and critical texts and structured on a question and answer format. For each question asked, there are anywhere between one and thirty different possible answers. The questions and answers are randomised, so an infinite exchange is possible.
PROFILE
Lorraine Oades’s sculpture/installations incorporate time-based media such as sound, video and film in order to invite viewers to engage physically with the work and explore their creative potential. For Lorraine, art-making is a performance-based activity where the process of time is implicit in the final artwork. Her recent work explores the use of musical instruments as physical interfaces that the viewer can play to control multi-channel video.
In addition to her art practice, Lorraine has initiated a number of community-based collaborative projects that emphasise alternative forms of public intervention aimed at addressing timely social concerns from a local perspective.
Martin Peach was responsible for the programming and electronic design of Self Typing Machines. Martin is a technician, tinkerer, programmer and musician based in Montréal, Québec, Canada. Over the past twenty years, Martin has helped artists realise electronic and interactive artworks involving analog and digital circuitry, incorporating various sensors, microcontrollers and software.
He has collaborated with François Girard, Bill Vorn, Jane Tingley, Ingrid Bachmann and Barbara Layne, among others.